Looking for inductor 200uH/1.5A, under 0.400" footprint

After you enter the order at Digikey, you can get a pair of number called "Web ID" and "Access ID" which allow you to access the order again from anywhere on the web. You can email those numbers to your client/purchaser and they can finalize the order. That's what I do. You can also make billing and shipping addresses different and enter any credit card number (you may have to know the 3 digit code in the back but I am not sure.)

Should be possible, providing they supply the necessary credentials (card number, name, billing address, magic number) and the shipping address is an authorized address (something they'll probably have to handle with their credit card company).

Could also be done but it looks like you'd need to give them your Digikey username and password in order for them to access the order.

Joerg:-

You can send them a csv file and get them to do this:

You can set up an uncommitted order and grab the stuff off the screen with a bit of editing.

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It would indeed make invoicing less cluttered, but then it makes your timetable dependent on your client's purchasing department. I wouldn't do it unless I knew that I could monitor the status of the order and rattle some bars with the client if it wasn't getting entered.

I'd have to trust the client's purchasing department, and even then I can already see the finger-pointing contest when my work was late because their purchasing department didn't get around to dealing with the order.

Clearly this would work well if whoever holds the credit card on the client's end is motivated, responsive, and responsible. So I'm not saying "don't do it, it'll be a nightmare" -- but I am most certainly saying "think about it, it _may well_ be a nightmare". Depends on the client, and you, on how much you trust them to be speedy with ordering vs. how much you trust them to be speedy with paying invoices, and on how willing you are to bankroll their inventory.

Thanks. If that works this would be cool.

That would be another option but I am going to try Muzaffer's method. Looks like just a couple of numbers and the order pops up, if that works. I guess the client could then enter their Digikey account number somewhere.

Oh, I fully trust the client. Most clients are smaller companies, meaning they are highly motivated to get this done because it affects the time frame within which they have a revised and reliably working product. You just have to make sure the person doing this ordering isn't out of office but I usually know that.

Actually it works quite and it's very easy. Whenever you start a new order, the two numbers you need are displayed at top of the page. When you are done entering, write the numbers down. Later you can go back to Digikey and click on "order status" to enter the numbers. You can check wheter your purchaser has paid for the order by the end of the day and even get a tracking number.

I do appreciate working for smaller companies. There's a sort of madness that sets in when the layers of management get too deep, particularly when the top layer is all finance guys. It never fails to astound me how some CEO who has no trouble demanding 100 times the pay of a store manager at McDonald's can't imagine that some engineers may be worth more than others.

Smaller companies get the concept of "I ask for more per hour, but even so I deliver more value per dollar". And they understand "you do your part and everything will go faster". Etc.

Etc.

Etc.

The other thing about some big companies is that they imagine that it's smart to alienate their suppliers and consultants by not paying on time. Foreign outfits seem to be much less prone to this idiocy.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Cool! That's the ticket then. Thanks. Now I just have to find that inductor.

The opposite happened at one client. Very efficiently run company, small, just my cup of tea. Needed an electronic design, quickly, the deadline set by one of their customers was in October last year. I delivered on time, all the docs, working and tested boards plus some spares, everyone happy. Their customer (big company) that was in such a rush to get this project done "hasn't gotten around to testing it" and now we have April ...

I've had big company clients like that... hell-bent-for-leather design and fabrication of the chip, then it sat for months "due to a change in direction and priorities" :-( ...Jim Thompson

Matrix management can quickly lead to such effects. That's why, when I was running a company, there was no matrix management.

Ah, I see what you're saying.. the webID and Access ID isn't tied to the customer number until you finish the ordering process. That's handy. I would not want to allow anyone else to be able to access historical order information.

I had a manager once who insisted that reorganizing a group into matrix management every once in a while was a good thing, to blow out the project-oriented management.

Just as long as you went back soon enough, without too much fuss & bother...

I don't know if it's true. Every time I've been involved with matrix management it's always been the death knell of focused product development.

That would probably a good time time to ponder "other avenues".

That's exactly my experience as well.

The odd thing is that (as I mentioned in my other post) while matrix management seems to be the death of projects, it does a better job at hiring better people for the company. I used to work for a manager who was just terrible at day-to-day management, but he was superlative at hiring good, self-motivated people. Basically, he spent his time getting into fights with other managers whether the situation warranted it or not, and we went around making things actually work. It was a very bizarre situation, but it did work.

I've often thought that the way to make matrix management work is in the context of a Big group, where the discipline managers hire, train and fire, while the project managers are given "monopoly money" to go "rent" engineers from the discipline managers.

I think it's one of those "sounds good in theory" things that would go down in flames, with severe battle damage from politics.

Cross-charging makes it even worse. When running a division I sometimes "matrixed" myself out to another division when they needed serious analog help. But it was totally informal (that's key) and the payment consisted of the occasional brewsky after work. The only thing we ever cross-charged besides production output was one computer, from a guy who transitioned to our division.

Oh yeah, it would :-)