Phone App Makes Finding Parts Easy

Phone App Makes Finding Parts Easy COMPUTERS Locating unusual bolts screws nuts and fasteners just got a little bit easier thanks to marketing giant Amazon and its new Part Finder phone app Just open the Amazon Part Finder app on your phone snap a picture of the fastener you’re looking for next to a penny then hit send and wait for an answer In seconds you will have an answer complete with availability cost per unit and shipping information Part Finder uses visual-based identity software that’s sophisticated enough to tell the difference between items such as a wood screw and a connector screw or a hex head and a wing nut Carefully tilting and angling the phone camera as you take the part picture allows the recognition software to analyze the part and produce a cross-hair bullseye once the part is identified After you snap the picture and send it Amazon’s data search system does the rest and provides a product answer right on your phone If this all sounds a little too good to be true you’re partially right because there’s currently no universal data base for every fastener known to man However every idea has to start someplace and Amazon says the new app knows the whereabouts of several hundred different types of fasteners now and hundreds more are being added as you read this The fore-runner of this clever idea was a business called PartPic launched in 2013 as a San Francisco-based startup The idea grew from the mind of Jewel Burks out of frustration and necessity Burks managed a sales staff for an industrial parts distributor that often had problems locating parts Burks says that if customers didn’t have a part number supplier name or couldn’t accurately describe what they needed finding an item was like searching for a needle in a haystack Looking for a solution Burks hired two PhDs to build an image-recognition system to scan her company’s parts bins for item numbers and styles based on pictures Amazon saw its potentital and acquired the business in 2016 and has since been adding hundreds of technical recognition features that continuously expand the parts database To use just search for Amazon Part Finder at www amazon com

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