:>I bet you would be amazed just how many companies there are out there where, :>to purchase prototype parts, the engineer sits around, creating a parts list :>at, e.g., DigiKey or Mouser to insure that stock is available and find :>alternative parts if need be... and then prints this out to give to a :>purchasing department that keys it again a second time!
I'm not amazed at all. It sounds like my life, except that I do this for *two* procurement departments. First, I do it for the group responsible for prototype procurement. Then I do it again for the group responsible for production procurement.
: It should be possible to solve. And until distributors get clued. One should : be able to construct bots/screenscrapers to accomplish automatic bom keying.
Actually, this isn't nearly enough. For one thing, only a small handful of vendors report availability on their public websites. And the reported quantities aren't necessarily accurate.
More vendors appear on special databases which you can access (over the net) if you are a large commerical entity who buys lots of parts. I believe these databases are more accurate and complete, but that's the business of our procurement departments, not mine. I don't know what policies govern the use of these special databases.
My impression of the electronics procurement/logistics business is that it is indeed ripe for some kind of reporting standard and a SOAP or XML based set of tools which can be used to access and search the vendor databases. However, it's unlikely the big distributors would like that, since obscurantism allows them to maintain control over your purchases through them. That is, if I can clearly see that Vendor A has 1000 parts at one price, Vendor B has 10,000 of the same part at a different price, and vendor C has 1,000,000 of the part at a third price, then they have nothing to compete on other than price, and no vendor wants that.
Stuart