Anna Harkins is the General Manager of CDS Visual, a visual-first engineering and commercial experience platform that helps manufacturing OEMs grow aftermarket revenue and speed up quote-to-order cycles. She began her career in the chemical, automotive, and food service equipment industries, so she knows what it feels like when a line goes down and nobody can name the part.

Jason Hein sat down with Anna to explore how OEMs can win back aftermarket parts sales by making parts easier to find and easier to buy. Anna explains why complex equipment benefits most from visual parts identification, and why many manufacturers are losing a large share of genuine part sales to third-party suppliers.

She walks through how a buyer can enter a serial number, see a 3D rendering, identify the failed component, and order it online without making a phone call. Manufacturers with only 2D documentation can offer the same experience by converting legacy PDF manuals into drawings with clickable hotspots.

Anna and Jason also discuss how dealers and distributors fit into the picture. Partner Exchange gives partners pricing, inventory, and shipping details in one place, while the complexity stays behind the scenes. The conversation closes with a practical look at the data manufacturers already have, and why retiring experts make this the right time to capture parts knowledge in systems.

Key idea: Make it easy to find the part and easy to buy it, and your aftermarket revenue stays with you.