Payload Systems Uses MFG.com to Build Fast, Cost-effective Supplier Network

ATLANTA, Nov. 7, 2005 - MFG.com, the world's largest marketplace for sourcing and selling custom-manufactured goods and services, has helped space shuttle contractor Payload Systems Inc. dramatically expand its network of qualified suppliers and more quickly and cost-effectively obtain specialized parts for its customers' space vehicles.

Cambridge, Mass.-based Payload Systems provides specialized devices and components for space flight for customers like Boeing, NASA and the Navy, and in 1989 was the first U.S. company to place a commercial payload aboard Russia's Mir space station.

Using MFG.com's online marketplace, Payload Systems has exponentially increased its stable of suppliers with the credentials, expertise and capacity to provide parts for its highly specialized contract jobs. Until Payload Systems mechanical engineer Edison Guerra discovered MFG.com, the company relied on just five sub-contractors.

"One of our suppliers was becoming a bit too comfortable in their relationship with us, and had been taking advantage of the situation," Guerra said. "We began using MFG.com to broaden our supplier base, and within a few months we had relationships with nearly 60 providers. Now we have a tiered supplier system that gives us fallback positions if a supplier can't deliver exactly what we need when we need it."

MFG.com also helps Payload Systems engineers work within strict time and cost budgets, especially for NASA, one of the company's biggest customers. After finalizing their designs, Guerra and the company's other engineers are responsible for ordering the parts to build their devices. The complexity of their designs leaves little time at the end of the cycle, so the orders must be very precise.

"We're often up against it time-wise," Guerra said. "When we order parts, they have to be completed very quickly, exactly to spec, and come in at a cost that won't take us over budget. MFG.com helps us find the suppliers that can get us the parts under those conditions."

MFG.com is a Web-based service that intelligently connects buyers with suppliers of manufacturing services while facilitating the collaboration, quoting, due diligence and analysis processes. More than 43,000 buyers across the industrial spectrum (aerospace, transportation, consumer products, electronics and more) use MFG.com to source, collaborate, and receive quotes online for over 200 manufacturing processes such as CNC machining, metal stamping, forging, plastic molding, metal fabrication and metal casting.

"Companies doing highly skilled, specialized work like Payload Systems can't afford to spend time doing all the traditional groundwork for developing a network of trusted suppliers," said MFG.com CEO Mitch Free. "MFG.com can do that for them by intelligently matching buyers' needs with specific suppliers and helping these partners efficiently execute their business online. In this way, MFG.com becomes their sourcing platform, giving companies like Payload Systems a new way to ensure they can deliver specialized products on time and under budget every time."

About Payload Systems Inc.
Payload Systems has been providing science and engineering services for spaceflight and terrestrial applications since 1984. Our spaceflight systems have performed successfully - without a single unrecoverable failure on orbit - on more than two dozen missions on free-flyers, the Space Shuttle, Spacelab, the International Space Station, and the Mir space station. For more information, go to www.payload.com

About MFG.com
MFG.com is the largest global online marketplace for the manufacturing industry. MFG.com instantly and intelligently matches sourcing professionals and engineers with suppliers who have the right expertise and capacity to manufacture parts and tooling on demand in accordance with their engineering drawings and CAD files. MFG.com's on-demand service is consolidating the once- fragmented world of manufacturing into an efficient marketplace, enabling products to be sourced and built more easily, quickly, inexpensively, and at higher quality levels. For more information, please visit http://www.MFG.com.