We are finally starting to hear some good news relating to the supply chain. Unfortunately, most of the good news has a multi-year lead time before we’ll be seeing the effects. For now, it’s best we just adapt. A big part of the process of adapting takes place long before it’s time to place an order.
Several potential roadblocks to a quick and easy prototype build can happen weeks or even months prior to build time. Component selection, especially these days with our unreliable supply chain can make or break a schedule. Just about any component can go out of stock without notice leaving you with a 52 week lead time. It’s not uncommon for larger organizations (those with a lot of money to throw around) to buy up all stock of critical long-lead time items. If that part is in your design, you may be faced with a redesign or a very long wait.
One day the components industry will have enough fab capacity to bring lead times back to a reasonable level, but even then, other uncertainties may come into play. I’ve already heard tell of a few chip foundries scaling down production for fear of a future glut even though we are still in a state of shortage. We just don’t know what the next few years will hold.
The best way to mitigate this issue is to design with it in mind. Avoid sole sourced components if you can. Avoid larger package sized components. These will take longer to get back to full supply due to the added raw material needed for the same functionality relative to a smaller packaged component of the same part number. You can also pick microcontroller (MCU) families that contain a large number of similar parts. Most MCU manufacturers have families that are close but not exact.
If you can use a part that has a large number of pin compatible similar parts, you will have more options to choose from at manufacturing time. Just understand that you will need to write your firmware such that it can play well with varieties and you will need to plan for careful documentation and lot coding to accommodate future support. I do understand that allowing for such part variations throughout a production ruins not best practice, and may be impossible for some applications, but if you can do so, it may be the difference between getting your product built and on the market vs. seeing a competitor take your market away with an earlier product release.
Duane Benson
I do hope only hardware engineers read that last paragraph because I essentially recommended making everyone else’s job just a bit more difficult
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