Tools from RP Photonics for Responsible Purchasing (original) (raw)

Posted on 2025-02-27 as part of the Photonics Spotlight (available as e-mail newsletter!)

Permanent link: https://www.rp-photonics.com/spotlight_2025_02_27.html

Author: Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta, RP Photonics AG

Abstract: For avoiding trouble with purchases, a structured purchasing process is essential. RP Photonics offers well thought-through web tools for that.

Content quality and neutrality are maintained according to our editorial policy.

Purchasing expensive goods in photonics, for example, comes with serious responsibilities. Imagine that you order a large quantity of optical components or some expensive diagnostic instrument (say, an optical spectrum analyzer), and later find that the goods cannot be properly used because of some serious problems. You may then be asked why exactly you decided for that particular product and supplier, and what aspects you have checked. It is then a no-go not to have clear answers! Even if things work more or less, but it turns out that a substantially better offer from some other supplier has been overlooked, you can get into a quite uncomfortable situation.

To avoid such problems, you basically need to apply a structured purchasing process, where you make sure that all essential aspects are properly checked before going ahead. Finding suitable suppliers, for example in our Buyer's Guide, is only one part of it; it is also essential to fully understand your needs. I already discussed that in an earlier Spotlight article.

Recently, we have introduce substantial new features in the RP Photonics Buyer's Guide to support our users in purchasing processes. This is explained in the following.

For each of the currently 760 product categories, we have a webpage which originally just listed all the suppliers known to offer such products. All these pages have now been equipped with the new AI-based feature in a section titled “Making Good Purchase Decisions”. For example, see the page for purchasing laser diodes.

Three Important Steps

In the mentioned section, you find three expandable sub-sections, which are explained in the following:

1. Understand the Technical Background

Obviously, you need to sufficiently understand the technology before you can judge what exactly you need and how to check it for specific offers.

For learning about the technology and the underlying science, RP Photonics offers a huge amount of high-quality resources: not only encyclopedia articles, but also tutorials, case studies and blog articles such as those of the Photonics Spotlight. On most of these pages, you find a few specific resources, depending on the technical context.

RP Photonics also offers technical consultancy — not only for product development, but also for supporting critical purchasing processes. If the cost of that is a tiny fraction of the intended purchase volume, and the risk can be substantially reduced with that, it can be a very wise investment.

Figure 1: For purchasing diode lasers, you are offered three relevant encyclopedia articles.

Of course, there are many more articles to be found on more specialized topics, e.g. on external-cavity diode lasers and distributed feedback lasers, which you find referenced in other articles.

2. Define Your Requirements

With sufficient technical understanding, you will hopefully be able to sufficiently well define your requirements. Obviously, that definition is essential for getting something with which you can then work. It should be (a) sufficiently clear and (b) sufficiently comprehensive, not leaving possibly essential aspects unnoticed. One often starts with some preliminary, relatively vague and incomplete specifications, and then needs to refine them — often in discussions between different people.

Our web tool cannot know what precisely you need. However, it lets you start with a list of aspects which are frequently relevant for the chosen product category. That will certainly feel better than starting with an empty page:

Figure 2: Working out your specifications is a central task. You start with a list of aspects which we give you, refine that, and you can use the AI assistant for improving them further.

After filling in your details — for example, some specifications of emission wavelength, linewidth of your laser diode etc. — you can use our new AI-based assistant for improving the specifications. It will try to formulate them more clearly and make you aware of possibly not get sufficiently clear or even missing aspects.

Figure 3: The AI assistant can add many more details and provide useful suggestions. That way, you are less likely to forget about some essential details.

In the end, you can use various checkboxes to indicate the current state of your process. Some of these settings have no influence on the offered functions of our tool; they are there only for your documentation purposes: When you later save the form as a PDF document (see below), you can see the states of these checkboxes.

3. Find Suitable Suppliers

Now you can continue with searching suitable suppliers. Which suggest that you presented further below on the page and select those which might be suitable and should get a closer inspection. For that selection, you can use the displayed checkboxes, or just click on the background of such an information box.

For each of the suppliers you selected, you will then find the company name and a full list of checkboxes for the previously defined aspects of specifications in our tool. In the screenshot below you see that list for one supplier in an intermedia state of the process:

Figure 4: You can now check all specific aspects for each considered supplier.

For checking whether your needs are met, you will probably need to visit the website of the supplier and possibly do further inquiries. For that, our list of suppliers gives you further useful tools. Those suppliers who are our advertisers also usually present product descriptions, which help you in deciding which ones may be suitable.

Document the Results

Documenting the results of your work is essential — for several reasons:

You can simply save the results of your work in a PDF document. For that, use the printing feature of your web browser (usually File | Print, Destination “Save to PDF”). If it takes a while to complete the process, it is a good idea to save intermediate states.

Don't worry about the fact that you can expand only one of the three sections at a time: When printing, they will all be expanded.

Conclusions

We hope that this purchasing tool, into which we have invested substantial time, will help may need to more conveniently implement reasonable purchasing processes and avoid costly mistakes.

Feedback is warmly welcome, especially if it helps us to further improve the tool.

This article is a posting of the Photonics Spotlight, authored by Dr. Rüdiger Paschotta. You may link to this page and cite it, because its location is permanent. See also the RP Photonics Encyclopedia.

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