Datum Source’s Post

We'd like to take a moment to congratulate Astrolab for their NASA LTV Contract selection! An exceptional team that serves as an industry benchmark for how a small, talented group can establish effective systems to rapidly develop and refine advanced hardware. An inspirational achievement!

Congrats Muon Space team! It's a true privilege to work with such a remarkable customer. Looking forward to witnessing even more success in the future, knowing the dedication you've invested to scale your ops. Congratulations on this milestone!

Which of your suppliers offer 5-axis machining? Who works with Titanium? Best quick-turn options? Do you have an NDA on file with this supplier? How extensive is your company's past collaboration with this supplier? Questions like this should be quick & easy for all employees to find answers to regarding your company's supply base. Supply Base Management involves organizing, segmenting, and overseeing suppliers to ensure your company has a cohesive strategy for utilizing each supplier partner. Rapid supplier selection and reduced quality issues due to improved decision making are benefits experienced immediately. The Supply Base Management module in Datum is widely praised by our customers. Here are some common use cases: 📋 Centralized vendor profiles: showcase & query contacts, capabilities, and qualifications 🛳️ Streamlined onboarding process: collect supplier documents and internal approvals 📅 Activity history for Quarterly Business Reviews 📊 Customizable reports for operations, compliance, and finance Contact info@datumsource.com to schedule a demo and discover the most effective approaches for developing your supply base strategy.

🤝 Happy to Announce Datum x ION Integration Partnership: Helping Position Hardware Companies for Workflow Visibility in Production. Hardware companies transitioning from R&D to production place significant emphasis on scalability, cost management, and operational efficiency. ION Factory OS (First Resonance), a modern MES for accelerating innovation, helps foster this maturity by enabling agility on the factory floor. Unlocking the full spectrum of ION's capabilities, customers seamlessly integrate with Datum to address procurement process gaps from part design to inventory, while also incorporating supply chain activity data into their production workflows. Part libraries are automatically in sync, so the entire procurement flow is streamlined - Requisitions —> Supplier Management —> RFQ —> Spend Approvals —> PO —> Open Order Management. Additionally, ETA's and Received status automatically sync between the systems. With cohesive communication & traceability across design, quoting, orders, inventory, and production, our integrated approach provides operations with exceptional clarity. This level of operational transparency is crucial for rapidly scaling hardware production within budget constraints. Discover how top Space, Defense, Energy, and Robotics companies transformed production efficiency with a Datum x ION integration. Reach out to info@datumsource.com.

Exciting hardware news – Datum is thrilled to partner with Duro, a leading provider of PLM solutions for disruptive hardware teams. Duro’s cloud-native PLM platform helps teams design and build products faster with automation, a streamlined UX and agile workflows. The Datum x Duro PLM integration allows our customers to extend this agility upstream to their supply chain and procurement processes. It delivers: ⭐ Data Accuracy: Duro's part library automatically syncs to Datum, ensuring that all the latest part files, revisions, quality clauses, and other attributes seamlessly transfer when it's time to procure a part. ⭐ Enhanced Efficiency: The part library sync dramatically shortens the timeline from part-release to part-on-order, expediting the entire procurement process. ⭐ Elimination of Errors: Without tedious manual data entry, the integration eliminates costly errors. This integration was carefully designed to help hardware teams optimize production processes, manage cost control, and scale up business operations promptly. Interested in supercharging your procurement process? We invite you to schedule a live demo showcasing the Datum x Duro PLM integration by leaving us a comment below. #Procurement #SupplyChain #PLM #Hardware #HardwareEngineering

🆕 Check out our new website: www.datumsource.com 🆕 Our mission is to simplify procurement by consolidating a fragmented process, currently managed on spreadsheets, email, shared drives, and other disconnected tools, into a unified source for efficient supply chain operations. We’re excited to share more about how our Procurement Management Platform (PMP) is helping hardware companies in Aerospace, Defense, Robotics, Energy, Medical, Automotive, and more! Supply chain or engineering leader? Let us demo how Datum Source can streamline your operations. Reach out to info@datumsource.com.

Story time – How Datum became a software company 🚀: Datum started as a procurement services company. #Aerospace, #Defense, #Robotics, #Automotive, and #Medical companies relied on us for technical part-sourcing. Suddenly, we were handling supply chain ops for 30+ companies with a lean team. Challenges emerged, so we built solutions: 🔍 Supplier Management: Built a tool to assess supplier capabilities & performance. 📝 Requisition: Developed a Purchase Requisition form for streamlined demand capture. 📤 Quoting: Created an RFQ portal to eliminate inefficient email quoting. 📦 Order Tracking: Leveraged our portal to replace email and spreadsheet order tracking. 🔐 ITAR & Security: Moved all tools to GovCloud to handle restricted files securely. Our entire procurement business was now being run on a single platform. Service customers noticed our efficiency. They wanted our software for their own internal process. We extended an annual license to a select few. It worked. 📈 Customers saw reduced rogue spending, fewer suppliers, streamlined Design → On-Order timeline, improved on-time deliveries, reduced issue tickets, and more. That’s when we got serious about being a software company. We focused on integration partnerships, listened to customer feedback, and fully committed to building the best Procurement Management Platform (PMP) for hardware companies. Huge thanks to our initial customers for pushing us in this direction! We’re just getting started 🙌 #Procurement #SupplyChain #Hardware

Hardware procurement is chaotic. While sprinting to achieve build milestones, early-stage hardware companies often expect Engineers to manage part-sourcing and order tracking with makeshift tools. As companies scale for production, even with dedicated Buyer headcount, procurement ops become even more chaotic. Hectic internal & external communication, mixed with too many suppliers and the constant addition of new digital tools, worsens the situation. This chaos results in frustration across the board. Engineers divert precious hours from their core work to supply chain, buyers struggle to keep their heads above water, suppliers grow distant. The cause of this chaos? A lack of streamlined operations. Various disconnected digital tools - Email, Slack, Sharepoint, Excel, JIRA, etc. are used to facilitate a process that is continually recreated. Solving this problem requires a Procurement Management Platform (PMP). Over the last 3 years, Datum has developed a PMP specifically for hardware companies. The platform is comprised of interrelated modules that map to each step in the procurement process: requisitions, supplier onboarding, supplier management, secure quoting, spend approval, purchase orders, and order tracking. Managing procurement ops with a PMP improves all types of first principle KPI’s, for example, “Time from Design Release to Part Delivered.” Secondarily, a PMP tool allows individuals to follow a consistent procurement process. Consistency enables traceability and data analysis. Industry leaders like SpaceX understand the importance of a PMP because they’re serious about concurrent engineering and getting hardware rich in the shortest amount of time possible. Reach out if you’d like to explore more of our PMP. It’s likely your hardware business can leverage at least one of the platform’s modules. #manufacturing #procurement #supplychain