Lake Forest, ILL.After 18 months of preparation, W.W. Grainger, Inc. officially launched a repair parts center online recently at www.grainger.com/repairparts. According to Bonnie McIntyre, president of Grainger Parts, the Web site offers detailed views of repair part diagrams from 110 manufacturers featured in Grainger's industrial buying catalog.

"Eventually, we hope to have about 550 manufacturers represented. I think we're the only online site that offers so many repair parts identified from that many manufacturers," she said.

The site is accessible from www.grainger.com through several links, she added. It features expanded-view diagrams of items that can be magnified for easy identification of the part a customer needs, she said.

"We've been working about a year and a half, and the hardest part was determining what information to collect from manufacturers and then how to put it live on the Internet," she said.

Many companies did not have the repair order lists and expanded-view charts in electronic form. Technicians needed to reduce the electronic file sizes so they can be viewed within 15 seconds, McIntyre said. Files go through several processes to be accessible to the viewer.

Many suppliers, she said, were reluctant at first but glad to have the job of creating electronic files of their products completed in the end.

"We did customer focus groups about how they search for repair parts and we tried to provide every electronic route for them online," McIntyre said.

The site's value to customers was proven in just the first month.

"We originally had a parts order form online and that Web page was viewed about 11,000 times a month. In September, the [new repair parts] pages were viewed over 105,000 times and it looks like October [viewing] will be over 150,000 times," she said.

Using the online site, McIntyre said, will help customers save on the costs of telephone and fax inquiries about parts. The main categories of repair parts activity at the company are for pumps, air compressors, HVAC and power tools, she said.