Component shortages?

Component Purchasing officers and Procurement offices (PO's) that are more than 10 years in the business will remember these type of shortages and production allocations issues. These PO's are well experinced and know how to smoothly, echonomically and efficently gather compoents for production long term.

PO's less than 10 year experince.... would probably say,,, nah I can get the parts on the internet anytime.

PO's that don't have a "relationship" with trusted suppliers will say "bloody xxx maufacturer has let us down"

PO's that do have relationships with their suppliers are often forwarnd by the suppliers and can easily manage any shortages issues...

It's the old supply and demand.... and good management of supply, relationships and early communication.

Suppliers... who needs them... only in a crisis... (it's too late).

Joe

We can't put the onus on the purchasing folks alone. Yes, they need experience, but so do design engineers. Don't use any fancy new part unless you absolutely have to. Prefer parts where there are numerous 2nd sources. Avoid parts from manufacturers that are known to prefer key account. Make the component tolerances in your circuit as large as possible. And so on. A lot of problems can be dodged at the design stage, and only there.

This is true on new products, but once a widget is in full production it's on the PO or IC manager's head to make sure inventory stays right. Of course he has to have useful production forecasts, too. Engineering can help over bumps if tolerances can be loosened, or whatever, but that gets expensive.

Also, engineers hear rumors first, usually. So when company X is about to swallow company Y and company X has a reputation of throwing a Molotov cocktail in there or screwing things up it would be good to alert the purchasing folks.

I predict that sometime in the next 52 weeks, *many* manufacturers will be very anxious to sell any reasonable quantity of components.

Be patient, this wild economic expansion cannot last forever.

--Winston

Expansion surely not, but certain categories of economic actors have an interest in making waves, and I don't see how that will ever stop.

Jeroen Belleman

I should have included a smiley, for I was attempting to suggest that any 'component shortage' has got to be a product of imagination rather than real.

I sometimes meet with vendors who fabricate stories too. Those meetings tend to be short and singular.

--Winston

In 15 years using Altera devices I've never had any problems obtaining them.

I've been kitting up for a prototype build and my FAE has had to pull a lot of strings to get me 4 Stratix's that were fairly freely available when the project started 6 months ago. It'll be October before I see any more.

I also have an Analog Devices ADC designed in which was available from Digikey and a couple of other distributors four months ago but I've had to get Analog customer services to trawl their system to get me

The Altera FAE said that 15 smaller fabs closed last year so all the big ones are working at more than capacity(?). Altera use TSMC which is fully booked. They announced the Cyclone IV family in October but so far only one device is out, the rest were due pretty quickly after that but are now scheduled for the Autumn (because they can't build them).

Shortages are real IMHO.

Nial

Ah, so we're at _that_ point in the EE boom-bust cycle!

So when is there going to be a huge glut of chips on the market, I wonder?

(...)

OP Quote> Please be advised that there is a nation-wide shortage of OP Quote> Electronic Ballasts due to a world-wide electronic component OP Quote> shortage including capacitors and integrated circuits.

Without revealing anything proprietary, can you help me understand the advantages of these high performance FPGAs in electronic ballast design? I'm also struggling to imagine a role for the ADC.

Could you point out the location of these parts in the diagram for me please?

Economic Boom: "Everybody's using our product! You'll be on allocation and pay premium prices!"

Economic Bust: "We shut down all our foundries! You'll be on allocation and pay premium prices!"

Economic Uncertainty: A few folks are using our product! You'll be on allocation and pay premium prices!"

Day of the Week: Ends in the letter 'y'! You'll be on allocation and pay premium prices!"

Thanks!

--Winston

Do you have a list to share?

When all the purchasing agents who have double-ordered start cancelling orders and all the companies who have hoarded parts slow down :-)

Seriously, try to get stuff like dual FETs in SO8 that can do 100V+. Haven't looked this month but last month those were mostly non-stock. Then there were situations where I designed in a part that had tons of stock only to discover one fine Monday morning that it had dropped to zilch everywhere.

You've got mail :-)

Before you get all sarcastic, did you read the other link in Dave Jones' original post?

Nial.

I apologize for my excessive snark; I was surprised by the 'subject drift'.

The article mentions memory chips, transistors, resistors and capacitors.

No mention of high performance, single source FPGAs, which aren't quite the 'commodity' (multiple source) parts exemplified by memory chips, transistors, resistors and capacitors.

I expect that parts manufacturers are just angling for higher prices. We'll pay, because China Inc. is the only source.

For the right money, that 12 month commodity lead time would magically shrink to nearly nothing.

It's the second oldest game in the world.

--Winston

No problem :-)

No fair enough, but in the last 15 years once Altera devices have been released they have generally been easy to get hold of.

I know the FAE I'm dealing with very well and believe him when he said that they had to scour the EBV European stocks to provide 4 samples for prototyping.

Analog showed no stock on the web site. Customer support in the States said they didn't have any of the ADCs, and all their distributors were out too.

Both firms are quoting three or four months lead time.

I'm not sure, the Altera FAE was genuinely frustrated. He said the only thing saving their bacon is that Xilinx are in nearly the same position.

Nial.

(...)

Still 'single sourced' 'non-commodity' parts, yes?

(...)

I would love to know the 'back story'! How is it even *possible* to have that kind of backlog in 2010 unless they discovered a significant design flaw and are re-spinning?

(...)

(WRT 'commodity parts':)

I've been out of the game for a long time but I still wonder: Is his response 'code' for "re-design using Lattice, Actel, Cypress, Quicklogic, Silicon Blue, Achronix, etc."?

--Winston

The real message is: Try your darndest to design it with discretes, simple logic chips, maybe 80C51 and whatever else is needed. No more FPGA. Which is what I generally do, then there are half a dozen sources and never a shortage :-)

I know this sounds kind of Luddite but it has served my clients quite well.

The 80C51 is a bad mamma jamma!