Bit of a Mouser rant

[hans]

Well, inventory stock also seems like a magic indicator.. but I agree it's probably engineered.
I ordered 5 STM32H725 chips just the other week from Mouser, because they had like 12 in stock. So I did, a little while after my order I got a shipment notification and saw the stock dropped back to 7. Makes sense..
Then later that night I checked back, and the stock increased again to 10. Someone's order cancelled? Payment that didn't go through? There 3 extra chips in the warehouse when at some qty, a recount was needed? Or this shadow restocking? Who knows.. All I know is that the next day the chips were sold out, and now it says not in stock, leadtime 45 weeks.

But I agree this business is starting to look a bit shady. If you click on the availability column of a part in the search list, it will send Mouser a shadow event so they can track how often people do that. They obviously will also know if that part is available, when it is expected, etc., so I'm sure ecommerce team are making elaborate reports on which combination of information displayed results in the highest sales.
 
It seems like they recently also adjusted how the "In Stock" checkbox worked. It used to display a huge amount of results of parts that were on order, but many of which have no ETA shipment date. The ST part I ordered was therefore hard to find, because it also had no parametric information filled in on their site website.. (e.g. if you only want to prototype QFP packages) so it was buried somewhere after a dozen pages for keywords "STM32H7". I use a uBlock CSS filter that removes all non-stock items without ETA to make this tedious process a lot quicker to do manually. I would love to have scraped the website for automatic mail notifications, but their site is pretty well protected against it.

Anyway, the uBlock filter for anyone interested:

Code: [Select]

mouser.com###SearchResultsGrid_grid > tbody > tr:not(:has-text(/Expected/)):not(:has-text(/In Stock/))(May require translation for local websites)

[Kjelt]

I understand you feel ripped.
But in reality it could be worse.
A small business I visit regularly was quoted over $35 for a jelly bean rs485 TI transceiver normally costing $0,85. Two parties in asia quoted the same price.
No stock anywhere and the parties that do have them ask insane prices. Those same parties make sure nowhere new stock is available they buy it up immediately.
It could well be a defensive move from Mouser to block those practices, yes hurting trusted customers as yourself but spreading the pain everyone in the industry suffers at the moment.

[SilverSolder]

I suspect things are not going to go back to normal any time soon - "they" want a much higher price level for electronics and what we are seeing is how that is being implemented.

Perhaps this will eventually tempt new companies to begin manufacturing electronic components? - after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

[Kjelt]

after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

Nothing to do with rocketscience everything to do with owning your own fabs or be in line for some fab to produce your dies. Waiting time at this moment three+ years.

[SilverSolder]

after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

Nothing to do with rocketscience everything to do with owning your own fabs or be in line for some fab to produce your dies. Waiting time at this moment three+ years.

So....  how did they do this in the olden days?  -  to make the simpler parts, is there room for someone to be creative?

[TimFox]

In the olden days, some parts such as wirewound resistors, wound capacitors, or even vacuum tubes required only mechanical tooling for fabrication (plus vacuum pumps).

[SilverSolder]

In the olden days, some parts such as wirewound resistors, wound capacitors, or even vacuum tubes required only mechanical tooling for fabrication (plus vacuum pumps).

It's good that we have a fallback position, lol! 

[Someone]

after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

Nothing to do with rocketscience everything to do with owning your own fabs or be in line for some fab to produce your dies. Waiting time at this moment three+ years.

So....  how did they do this in the olden days?  -  to make the simpler parts, is there room for someone to be creative?

Many more companies owned and operated small fabs. But even that wont help you as its not the primary constraint.

Shortage right now, wafers ready to process:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-09/key-supplier-of-wafers-for-chips-says-it-s-sold-out-through-2026

the market for 300 mm semiconductor silicon wafers saw demand for both logic and memory applications greatly exceed supply

In the market for wafers of 200 mm or smaller, as well, supply and demand remained tight

Consolidation of the supply chains with fewer competitors and high utilization (keeps shareholders happy) made for a fragile market.

[SilverSolder]

after all, jellybean electronic components are not exactly rocket science to manufacture...

Nothing to do with rocketscience everything to do with owning your own fabs or be in line for some fab to produce your dies. Waiting time at this moment three+ years.

So....  how did they do this in the olden days?  -  to make the simpler parts, is there room for someone to be creative?

Many more companies owned and operated small fabs. But even that wont help you as its not the primary constraint.

Shortage right now, wafers ready to process:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-02-09/key-supplier-of-wafers-for-chips-says-it-s-sold-out-through-2026

the market for 300 mm semiconductor silicon wafers saw demand for both logic and memory applications greatly exceed supply

In the market for wafers of 200 mm or smaller, as well, supply and demand remained tight

Consolidation of the supply chains with fewer competitors and high utilization (keeps shareholders happy) made for a fragile market.

It sounds a lot like the baby formula scandal in the US, where it turns out there is a massive dependency on a single manufacturing site....   a situation brought about by lax anti-trust enforcement, among other failings.

[julian1]

Ignoring the demand side for a moment. Did companies like AD shut down fabs to consolidate resources when they acquired LT, and Maxim?

I found this list of semiconductor sites, but it's not clear how up to date it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

One would think that industry/finanical analysts would know what gets made where, and using what processes, in order to provide  company valuations which are public record.

[David_AVD]

I've noticed a few things on Digikey that show good stock in the parametric list, but zero when you go into the actual part page.

[tooki]

Ignoring the demand side for a moment. Did companies like AD shut down fabs to consolidate resources when they acquired LT, and Maxim?

I found this list of semiconductor sites, but it's not clear how up to date it is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_semiconductor_fabrication_plants

One would think that industry/finanical analysts would know what gets made where, and using what processes, in order to provide  company valuations which are public record.

Assuming it’s reasonably current and complete, the number of fabs ever closed is less than 10% the number of the fabs currently in use, and the list of operating fabs shows many fabs changed hands multiple times (sometimes even back to a company that once sold it! 😂). Given that chip demand hasn’t ever really dropped, it makes sense to keep fabs open or upgrade them, since consolidation suggests overcapacity, but I don’t think the mergers have ever actually resulted in overcapacity in the market as a whole.

[TimFox]

A general comment on supply and demand in economics:
The basic rule that prices go up when demand exceeds supply and go down when supply exceeds demand was known to farmers in antiquity.
However, the result that farmers'  income goes up in times of low supply (e.g., drought), and down in terms of high supply (good weather) became obvious much later.

[SilverSolder]

A general comment on supply and demand in economics:
The basic rule that prices go up when demand exceeds supply and go down when supply exceeds demand was known to farmers in antiquity.
However, the result that farmers'  income goes up in times of low supply (e.g., drought), and down in terms of high supply (good weather) became obvious much later.

That's how the whole financial industry around commodity futures and options got started...  to even these fluctuations out.

Another issue is that the laws of supply and demand assume a free market of buyers and sellers.  Unfortunately, in the real world, people generally hate free markets and we can usually find all kinds of both government and private actor manipulation going on if we look under the covers...