Given the issues with order fulfillment mentioned here a couple of weeks ago, this may no longer be good enough. The amazing thing, to me, was their total dismay that engineers would order parts. ...like they were contaminated, or something. I understand that they couldn't go into the final product, but boards are cheap. It's not like the first item is going to be shippable (but that's another story).
Several manufacturers are apparently dumping these lines (CS10?). All but a few crystals (14.7456MHz, and such) are custom ordered. This one happens to be 12.0MHz. In reality it can be anything from 4-40MHz. We also use a
12.5MHz crystal in the product. I could easily use it, but with 12.7K in inventory there isn't any point.Yes, these crystals are from China, too.
That always surprised me, and still does. In some companies every ever so small purchase must go through a central department. Since those guys are often busy fighting fires in the logistics area I have seen many serious project delays because parts for experiments weren't there in due course. When I took the helm at a company's division this was one of the first things I changed. Engineers were allowed to order, and every group manager received a sizeable purchase authority. A corporate credit card was there to get stuff in a jiffy.
If one trusts engineers with design decisions I don't quite understand why one should not also trust them with such minor financial decisions. I mean, if one of them would go overboard too many times the big boss would see that on the regular reports and could have a chat. In my case that was never needed, in years. But I do remember some consternation when the accounting guys of the company that bought us heard about this.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
If a certain type seems to get dropped you might want to ask around. In China there always seems to be someone who keeps making older stuff. For example, through-hole parts and single-sided phenolic are kicking and alive over there. When you ask a board house about phenolic in the US that can result in a blank stare ;-)
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Right. With trust goes responsibility. Don't trust me, I take no responsibility for results.
Overboard, yes, but this stuff is *CHEAP*. What's a few hundred bucks? Ok, when I was using $3800 FPGAs, sure, be careful with them. $.002 resistors? and $.03 gates?
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Yeah, we have no trouble finding someone else. It's just some work showing that the new parts are really equivalent. It also takes 12 weeks (or more) to get the evaluation parts before useful quantities can be ordered (then another
12 weeks).
I did give them some pointers about my expectations, such as "Now don't go out there and order five new MS-Office licenses just because Microsoft came out with a new version" :-)
Seriously, this can happen. I had my surprise recently when arriving at a client to check out my prototype. They wanted to time a mechanical reaction initiated by my circuit and I had told them that we could do stuff like that on the cheap. A $1 piezo would have sufficed. Long story short when I arrived there was a professional sensor in hi-sheen stainless steel, cradled in a velvet-clad and immaculately polished wooden box ...
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
[...]
For a crystal? It's been a while but I could always get them in two weeks if needed. In a real crunch within the same week. But yeah, China tends to take longer and often the willingness to expedite drops down when the supplier grows and takes on more important (a.k.a. bigger) customers. Been there :-(
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Perhaps they didn't understand the requirements and thought they needed something traceable to NIST.
At one time, sure. No longer.
Apparently these parts are only sourced in China, now. Even crystal oscillator lead times have slipped out that far and the disty can, under normal circumstances, program them.
Well, the timing would be kind of hard to trace to NIST unless the connected electronics are traceable. Which I guess was technically the case because it was still within the calibration period.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
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Hmm, putting my capitalist hat on (which I usually only take off at night ...) all this opens numerous opportunities:
a. A "good-old-days" type of service for crystals.
b. A futures trading system for components. With hedge contracts and the whole nine yards.
c. Parts obsolescence insurance plans with a leadtime rider, with an (expensive) option to also insure against excessive leadtimes.
d. Hunter businesses, where there are numerous very smart engineers who no longer participate in the productive life of a circuit designer but canvas the market all day long. In search of parts that shoot up in leadtime but where they find out that these are crucial to some products. Then buy the whole stock in one fell swoop, and re-sell it to companies that failed to move away from JIT.
Ka-ching!
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Is it not a bit difficult to get what does not exist due to the long timeframe?
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The problem here is that there isn't enough money in crystals anymore to make them worthwhile for anyone but the Chinese.
Isn't that what disties do? They have the added advantage of being fronted by some manufacturers.
Quick, call AIG.
e. Index Arbitrage. Buy in the US and sell in Europe. Buy in China and sell in the US.
That's why it is customary to run extra wafers and put those on the shelf in case of increased future demand. That seems not to be the case anymore with some products. And yeah, when you have to schedule a whole new wafer run you'll see those long leadtimes, plus it only makes sense if the total orders have reached a substantial level.
Here we have the chicken-and-egg phenomenon: I as a design engineer will generally move on when I see a 22wk leadtime, trying to find a solution with parts that are more available. Or I go it discrete instead of using a chip. That means my clients who are unlikely to touch successful designs again without a compelling reason will never even order such stuff. That fuels the downward spiral for such parts. Old American sales wisdom: If you don't take care of your customers, someone else will.
I don't have a good explanation for this. Either manufacturers lost the art of planning to some extent, are hardcore cash-starved or really peed into their pants after the downturn that set in around 2008.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Washington? Which industries are the big consumers of these parts? And how are they doing (politically and economically)?
I wonder whether the manufactures really consider "$3k of extra inventory" to be a big customer. Maybe not one even worth worrying over.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Life is like an analogy.
Yes, Washington. What does it matter who the consumers are? The producers aren't going to produce if they're going to be taken to the cleaners.
$3K times 3K part numbers gets to be a big number for a small business.
Or look at their crystal ball and have no interest in financing Obama's vision of the world on their backs.
Or all of the above.
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China doesn't give a damned. They've got enough working cash in dollars to not care.
-- Paul Hovnanian mailto:Paul@Hovnanian.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ Life is like an analogy.
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Clueless, totally clueless.
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