[bluesquared]

It's my current living nightmare. Endless treadmill of:

1. Our contract manufacturer calls in a panic no longer able to obtain/was shorted on a shipment of part XYZ. XYZ is increasingly becoming random "jellybean" parts like MOSFETS, oscillators, to slightly-more-complicated but not "fancy" stuff like serial transceivers, USB stuff, NOR flash, load switches. TI is the bane of my existence currently.

2. Search for a drop-in or near drop-in replacement. There are none, because that's what everyone's doing.

3. Search for alternative designs. Maybe the component is in distributor's stock (Digikey, Mouser, Newark, etc), maybe it's not.

4. Test the alternative design. By the time I receive parts, prototype, test, guess what? Can't get those parts anymore. Go back to step #2.

5. Fall behind on all of my other NPD responsibilities. Stress, burnout, acceptance. Lament not going into another engineering field. Feel bad about my midwest metro area compensation in comparison to a bunch of Silicon Valley SWEs on website.

6. GOTO #1

[swamp40]

Your OODA loop is way too long. We buy ALL the parts immediately, within 10 minutes of finding something. If they don't work, it's a loss.

On new designs, I find a part in stock, we order ALL we need for the next year, and THEN I make a footprint and put it in the design. For EVERY SINGLE PART. Starting with the IC's. It actually works quite nicely once you get used to it. Obviously, there are some losses there too - just the cost of doing business in these crazy times.

[InitialLastName]

Next-level business plan: become a chip reseller for all the parts you didn't use. The prices are only going up.

[bluesquared]

Wish my slow corporate behemoth would support this, but they are the opposite of agile.

It's also gotten to the point where there doesn't exist enough stock in distribution to buy a year's worth. And I'm not talking high volume, maybe 1k/year to 50k/year. Distributors are constantly decommitting from orders, broker stock is drying up, etc

[swamp40]

It is surprising how easily companies will fund this change in buying habits when the entire company's existence depends on it. The CEO needs to have a come-to-Jesus moment though.

We've spent several hundred thousand at "Win Source" broker in China, and haven't had a problem yet (knock on wood). We X-ray and test to verify though.

Mostly, Chinese brokers are a den of thieves/a pool of sharks. If they can counterfeit it, they do. Use a credit card to help with clawing your money back in case of fraud. And never ever buy IC's from Amazon or Ebay. Those are ALL fake.

[scott_z]

The shortage of electronic components will continue for a long time, and a professional partner who only sells genuine products is particularly important.

[toss1]

>>If they don't work, it's a loss.

Don't you find that they can be resold? Surely there's someone desperately looking for the parts you find unusable, but would fit their needs...

New Craigslist category for semiconductors?

[djmips]

Isn't this just contributing to the problem? I mean it's like toilet paper in the pandemic. But of course, if you're in business what choice to you have?

[amelius]

That doesn't work for new designs when the parts are simply not available.

[Gracana]

> increasingly becoming random "jellybean" parts

I can't even get cables anymore. Or connectors. It's an insane situation, and the company I work for isn't built to manage this level of churn in our products. How do you support customers when equipment BOMs change every week? We just can't keep up.

[extrapickles]

I'm involved with pneumatic connector manufacturing, and we had trouble for awhile getting raw aluminum at any price to make them. At one point we had to buy 3" aluminum bar and use our lathe to turn it down to the size we actually needed (mostly a mix of 2" and 2.5") causing a insane amount of aluminum and time to be wasted (yes the scrap is recycled, but its worth 1/10 of it in bar form). During this it was tempting to tell customers placing orders that if they want their parts faster than 3 months, they need to send us raw aluminum so we can actually make their order.

For some of the other "jelly bean" parts we need (o-rings, snap rings, etc) we are looking at making them in-house, but both the raw materials and machinery to make them are not possible to get. We could spend the next few months making our own machines to fabricate them, but without being able to source steel and various rubbers any more reliably than the finished goods, there isn't much point.

At this point, its tempting to try and raise capital to start mining and smelting aluminum, steel and buy an oil well and small refinery so we can ensure we have the materials needed to keep production smooth.

[daniel-cussen]

Companies used to do that before the leveraged-buyout / MBA / private-equity ridiculousness started. I think...Youngstown Tube Co had its own mines, called "captive mines" dedicated just to making metal for them. That's where captive insurance got its name.