Ninety seconds inside the customer view
A walk through a live order from the customer's side: the milestone timeline, a delay notice with its new date, the parts shelf, and the traceability pack behind a delivery. From the demonstration account.
1 min 34 s, no sound. Nothing downloads until you press play. Everything shown is explained in the sections below.
Why we built it
We asked buyers what actually hurts about subcontract purchasing. The answers were consistent. Chasing order updates by email. Hunting for the right drawing revision at reorder time. Certificates that arrive weeks after the parts, if at all. Finding out about a delay when the delivery date has already passed.
So we built our own system instead of buying one, and we run TrueNorth on it. Every order, every partner shop, every certificate goes through it. The screenshots below are from a live demonstration account, and what you see is exactly what an invited customer sees.
Why access is by invitation
Because the platform is only useful when it is set up properly, and that is done by hand. Before a customer's first order runs through the Digital Factory, we load their parts and drawing revisions, agree price locks, set up their contacts and approvals, and match their work to the partner shops that will actually make it. That takes engineering time, and the partner capacity behind it is finite.
We would rather run a smaller number of accounts well than open a self-service signup and watch the promises on this page slip. So we take on a small number of new accounts at a time, and we say no when the fit is not there. The application below is how we tell the difference.
A good fit
- You buy machined or fabricated parts that come round again: repeat batches, call-offs, spares.
- Traceability is a requirement, not a nice-to-have: 3.1 certificates, inspection records, revision control.
- Your parts cross more than one process: machining plus finishing, plating, treatment or assembly.
- You have a small buying team and want one supplier who owns the whole route.
Probably not yet
- A single one-off part with no follow-on. Send it through the quote form instead; you still get the DFM review and the guarantees.
- Price-only shopping across marketplaces. The Digital Factory is built for accountability, and that is what you would be paying for.
- Work that must be placed in China. We do not place work there, on principle, and the platform's partner network reflects that.
Your orders, tracked like a parcel
Every order runs on a milestone timeline: confirmed, material ordered, material received, machining, finishing, inspection, despatched. Each stage is stamped when it happens, so "where is my order?" takes ten seconds to answer at any hour, without writing an email.
The part nobody else does is at the top of this screenshot. When something slips, you hear it from us first, with the reason and a firm new date. Not a tracking number that quietly goes stale. A written delivery update, before the promised date passes.
My Parts: your catalogue, remembered
Every part you order goes on your shelf, locked to the exact drawing revision it was made from. Order it again in one click. The drawing question disappears, because the platform will not let a locked part be made from the wrong revision.
Parts you reorder carry a locked price for 12 months, and the lock is shown right on the card. If the underlying raw material moves more than 10%, we show you the cost movement and renegotiate openly. No quiet increases.
Quotes you accept online
Quotes show the list price and your net price per line. Tick the lines you want, accept, and the order is placed and confirmed in the same minute. Untick anything you are not ready for and come back while the quote is valid.
Our Zero-Defect Guarantee and the 12-Month Price Lock are printed on every quote, because a promise you have to ask for is not much of a promise.
Paperwork that does itself
Every delivery is signed for by name, and the signature shows up on the order the moment it happens. Behind each delivery note sits a traceability pack: certificate of conformity, EN 10204 3.1 mill certificates and dimensional inspection records, tied to the material lot that went into your parts. During an audit, that is a download, not a week of emails.
Invoices live in the same place, against the same order, so your accounts team stops asking you to forward PDFs.
The factory side runs in the same system
This is the part you would not see on a marketplace. Our manufacturing partners work in the same platform: they acknowledge orders, log material heat numbers against your batch, record which machine made your parts and submit dimensional measurements as they inspect. Your traceability pack is built from that data, not typed up afterwards.
When a part repeats, the shop that made it last time is shown its own process record: the machine, the fixture, the program. Repeat batches get made the same way as the first one, from records rather than from memory. If you have ever had a perfect first batch and a puzzling second one, you know why this matters.
The supplier's view. Your company name is never shown to the shop at quoting stage; drawing title blocks are scrubbed before a drawing goes out.
How access works
Apply
Five minutes, no drawings needed. Tell us what you buy, how often, and what your parts have to prove. Jan-Marc reads every application himself.
A conversation
Within two working days we come back to you. If the fit is there, we talk through your parts and set you up with a demonstration login so you can click around with sample data first.
Invitation
Your own account is set up by hand: parts, revisions, price locks, contacts. Your first order runs through it end to end, with the guarantees printed on the quote.
If the answer is not yet, we say so, and you can still order from TrueNorth in the normal way. Email and phone work exactly as before. The platform is there for the moments a portal is faster.
Apply for access: five minutes, no drawings needed.
Tell us about what you buy. We reply within two working days, and every application is read by Jan-Marc, not scored by software.
Digital Factory FAQ
Because every account is set up by hand before the first order runs: parts and drawing revisions loaded, price locks agreed, contacts and approvals configured, and the work matched to the partner shops that will make it. That takes engineering time, and partner capacity is finite. We take on a small number of new accounts at a time so the promises on this page hold for every one of them.
No. There is no licence fee and no software to install. It is not a product we sell; it is how we work with the customers we take on. The only condition is that the fit is right, which is what the application is for.
Apply on this page. It takes about five minutes and needs no drawings. Jan-Marc reads every application and replies within two working days. If the fit is there, we talk through your parts, set you up with a demonstration login filled with sample data, and then build your own account by hand. If the fit is not there yet, we say so.
Yes. Send your parts through the quote form or by email, exactly as before. The DFM review, the 48-hour quote, the Zero-Defect Guarantee and the 12-Month Price Lock apply to every order, on the platform or off it. The Digital Factory adds live tracking, one-click reorders and the traceability pack on top.
Your company and TrueNorth. Access is separated per company at database level, and every account signs in with two-factor authentication. When a drawing goes out to a manufacturing partner for quoting, the title block is scrubbed first, so the shop sees the geometry and tolerances, and not your company's identity.
In the EU, with documents held in our own Microsoft 365 tenant. Sign-in is by emailed link plus a one-time code from an authenticator app. There are no passwords to steal or phish.