Case study
IMM Sourcing Pipeline
IMM is an internal procurement tool that automates an otherwise manual injection molding machine sourcing workflow. It searches Gmail for quotes from a curated supplier list, downloads attachments, extracts text from PDFs, and assembles a comparison-ready report with known-price reference data.
The brief
Challenge
Comparing IMM quotes across many suppliers means manually digging through email threads and PDF attachments with inconsistent formatting and no central reference.
Approach
What we made
Split the workflow into four idempotent scripts so each stage can be re-run independently, paired with a Gmail allowlist query and a known-price reference file for sanity checks.
- Four-stage pipeline: fetch threads, download PDFs, extract text, build document.
- Searches a curated allowlist of 17+ injection molding machine suppliers.
- Master runner supports re-running individual stages without redoing earlier work.
- Reference price data tracked per-supplier in a structured JSON file.
Outcome
Results
Compressed multi-day procurement comparison work into a repeatable pipeline that produces a single comparison document on demand.
Gallery
Visual snapshots
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