Searching for a Replacement Part? Just Take a Picture of It EVEN IF YOU’RE not a machinist, you’ve probably had a crisis at home or with your car where you only needed one weird, tiny screw to fix the problem. You bring the part to a store and stand in line only to discover the part isn’t in stock. So they call it in, and the part that arrives maybe a week later is the wrong one. Then the whole process starts over again. It all sounds terribly inefficient! So of course, there’s a new startup to help move the parts-finding world into the 21st century with a visual search tool for finding replacement parts. It’s called PartPic . Using its very own image-recognition software, PartPic works with suppliers to not only digitize their catalogs but make all the parts inside searchable to customers using smartphones. With this new system, instead of trying to find a match in a phonebook-thick parts catalog, you just take a couple of pictures of the part with your smartph...