The buzz at this year’s mammoth manufacturing technology event IMTS 2016, the International Manufacturing Technology Show, was largely about “Industry 4.0”—machines embedded with electronic sensors that can instantly warn when components are worn and need to be replaced, when calibration measures are off target, when a machine is running at too high a temperature. And those are just some of the crucial bits of information that a company operating such machines can view on any internet-connected device.

A year ago, the buzz was more about 3-D printing, the ability to send over the internet software instructions that tell a 3-D printing device how to build something out of various types of metals, ceramics, plastics and other materials.

Industry 4.0 and 3-D printing, of course, both have plenty of development ahead—as some companies may use the former to also trigger online orders of replacement parts, and the may enable manufacturers to build components at assembly plants and avoid costly shipping between facilities.

But another internet-driven trend is already taking hold among a number of the some 2,000 companies that exhibit their industrial machinery and tools at IMTS. Among 10 companies I spent time with at the show this month at McCormick Place in Chicago, several were operating—and improving—e-commerce sites for for distributors and end-customers. Some sites were only for selling parts; others were for parts and large machinery. And some were quite sophisticated.

At the exhibit of Walter USA, for instance, cutting-edge e-commerce was on display at the manufacturer of machines and tools that other manufacturers use to drill and cut into metal to fabricate products ranging from airplanes and locomotives to race cars and wind turbines. Walter showed on its computer display screens how customers can come to its website, Walter-Tools.com, and use the new My.Walter feature to design their own customized portal with their preferred array of product images and buying tools.

Its online customers can use tools like Walter’s Global Productivity System, or GPS, a type of product configurator that lets customers that need, say, a metal boring tool, to enter information about the type of material they’re boring into and the number of units they’re planning to produce over a set amount of time. The GPS, pulling data from multiple sources, then instantly provides such information as the number of units the customer can expect to produce before replacing the tool—and the overall production cost per unit.

With that kind of helpful information provided to online customers—and in an industry with tons of competition—it’s no wonder, for manufacturers and distributors, e-commerce is more than just buzz.