I think you could start to leverage AI here to do some research for you, for example, I put your query into Codex CLI (selfishly, I was testing a new feature for my Codexometer)
Yes—but access varies sharply. The clearest catalog-feed offering is SMC; THK supports private B2B/EDI integration;
IAI mainly provides engineering files; Mitsubishi Electric has useful structured exports and third-party API access,
but not an obvious manufacturer-run catalog API.
Manufacturer Confirmed structured access Practical availability
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
SMC EDI; static customer catalogs in BMEcat, Commercial/customer onboarding through the
Excel and CSV; OCI/cXML punchout; online regional SMC e-procurement team. This is
price, lead-time and order-status queries. the strongest “yes.”
Also CADENAS/PARTcommunity CAD and EPLAN
product data.
──────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────
THK Omni THK connects purchasing and core Private/account-specific. I found no public
systems through EDI/ODO; distributor REST API or catalog-wide CSV/XML feed.
ordering, quotations, delivery data and
past orders. Parametric product data and
CAD are available through PARTcommunity.
──────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────
IAI Parametric PARTcommunity catalog, Primarily per-product engineering access.
configurable CAD in STEP/IGES/DXF/native No documented catalog-feed, dealer API or
formats, PDF datasheets, and selection bulk CSV/XML/JSON export found.
tools producing quotations, drawings and
specifications.
──────────────────────── ───────────────────────────────────────────── ─────────────────────────────────────────────
Mitsubishi Electric FA Selection tool exports Excel BOMs and Good engineering-data access, but no public
AutomationML; EPLAN supplies an Mitsubishi-operated, catalog-wide product/
authenticated REST API and commercial-data pricing API found.
CSV downloads for Mitsubishi parts;
official CAD/document bulk-download
facilities.
Some useful specifics:
- SMC explicitly advertises static catalogs in BMEcat, Excel and CSV, EDI transaction exchange, and OCI/cXML punchout
integration. This appears on its European e-procurement offering, so availability may depend on country and account
size. SMC e-procurement (https://www.smc.eu/de-de/loesungen/global-services/e-procurement)
- SMC also contributes a substantial product dataset to EPLAN. The portal currently shows roughly 45,000 SMC records,
containing part numbers, descriptions, classifications and engineering attributes. SMC in EPLAN Data Portal
(https://dataportal.eplan.com/parts/list?manufacturer=SMC&page=1)
- THK’s own reporting describes Omni THK linking customer purchasing systems and distributors through EDI using its
Omni THK Direct Order System. Access can depend on the customer’s commercial relationship, department approval and
even a fixed corporate IP address. THK Integrated Report
(https://www.thk.com/sg/en/products/catalog/pub/Integrated_Report_2024_en.pdf), Omni THK access details
(https://www.thk.com/opm/jp/en/online_service/explanation/member/)
- THK and IAI both maintain genuinely parametric CAD databases on CADENAS/PARTcommunity. These contain model-number
construction rules and configuration parameters—not merely PDFs—but bulk reuse or redistribution would need
permission from the manufacturer/CADENAS. THK PARTcommunity (https://thk.partcommunity.com/), IAI PARTcommunity
(https://iai.partcommunity.com/3d-cad-models/?languageIso=en)
- IAI’s selection system claims coverage of over one million configurations and can produce a quotation, drawing and
specification after selection. Its official parametric service supports STEP, SAT, IGES, SolidWorks, CATIA,
Inventor, DXF and other formats. IAI selection tools
(https://www.iai-robot.co.jp/company/advantage/sentei/index.html), IAI parametric CAD
(https://www.iai-robot.co.jp/download/cad/3d/)
- Mitsubishi’s FA Integrated Selection Tool exports selected model numbers, quantities, prices and totals to Excel,
and selected configurations to AutomationML. Mitsubishi FA selection tool
(https://www.mitsubishielectric.com/fa/products/select/), export documentation
(https://www.mitsubishielectric.com/fa/jp_en/products/selectiontool/common/help/en/CM001.html)
- EPLAN currently lists roughly 9,800 Mitsubishi Electric records. Its documented API supports part search/details,
manufacturers, classifications, CSV commercial-data downloads and DXF files using bearer-token authentication.
Mitsubishi in EPLAN (https://dataportal.eplan.com/parts/list?fuzziness=0&manufacturer=MIT&page=1), EPLAN Data Portal
API (https://dataportal.eplan.com/api/doc)
My overall assessment:
- SMC: likely willing and technically ready to supply a proper product feed.
- THK: likely able to integrate orders and customer-specific data, but you would need commercial onboarding and must
ask specifically about product-master exports.
- Mitsubishi Electric: EPLAN is the most immediately usable API route for engineering attributes; obtain pricing,
availability and full lifecycle coverage separately.
- IAI: assume CAD/configurator access only unless its regional sales or distributor organization offers a private
feed.
For an approach to these companies, I would request a “product-master syndication feed” explicitly and specify:
BMEcat/ETIM/eCl@ss or CSV/JSON, full and delta files, model-number rules, lifecycle status, replacements, attributes
with units, document/CAD links, regional availability, price-list separation, update frequency and redistribution
rights. Avoid relying on undocumented JSON endpoints behind their public sites; those are usually unstable and their
terms rarely permit catalog replication.
So your system might start to resemble an octopus to begin with, with bespoke feed systems from each provider acting as a translation layer into your combined datastore.
But this approach will reduce error rates and leverage as much clean data as possible.