Corporate Overview
Imaginestics’ mission is to help companies visualize and execute a dynamic and intelligent
supply chain that is responsive to their ever-changing needs.
In December 2002, Nainesh Rathod and Jamie Tan started Imaginestics to help companies
and organizations develop smart supply chains. To do this, it was necessary to apply
some out-of-the-box thinking. The traditional mode of dealing with products has
always been with textual descriptions, which often drive RFQs (requests for quotes).
What if we instead used the shape of the product, its true lowest common denominator,
to help identify the suppliers who have the capability to produce such a shape or
who have made similarly shaped products or components in the past? To execute this
vision, we first had to develop a shape search engine. Given the CAD and image processing
background of the founders and a partnership with Dr. Karthik Ramani, professor
at Purdue University, the company developed a revolutionary shape search engine,
VizSeek. With as little as a doodle (free-form sketch), the VizSeek search engine
could produce a dashboard view of similar designs within the company or similar
products across the supply chain. The more detailed the visual input (meaning CAD
designs, multiple images and/or drawings), the better the search and the quality
of sources.
The founders then launched an online platform for the search engine, where product
and custom manufacturers, service providers and distributors could create their
own visual spaces on the web, called VizSpaces, which they could then form into
either secure or open communities. A company’s VizSpace could contain visual information
of their products or capabilities, such as product catalogs, marketing documentation,
product images or CAD models/drawings and manufacturing capabilities. All of this
visual and text information would then be indexed by VizSeek and used in many ways:
buyers could find appropriate suppliers when creating RFQs or invite them into their
own community; suppliers could connect with each other in partnering to fulfill
the requirements of a given RFQ. The powerful manufacturing ontology behind VizSpace
enables intelligent connections, creating more business opportunities for companies
that have VizSpaces. The founders are now pushing visual search technology to the
mobile platform to enable this connection to happen at the click of a button – from
a picture to product visibility in supply chain in a matter of seconds. Stay tuned,
as Imaginestics is revolutionizing the supply chain and how we think about it.