General > General Technical Chat
Distributors are so thick nowadays
rsjsouza:
--- Quote from: tom66 on May 28, 2020, 08:33:54 pm ---I am asked to complete BOMs with specific part numbers, rather than a generic classification.
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I see that as well, but in our case is to simply consolidate purchases across different business units. I still feel the need feom time to time to re-check my designs for redundancies and off parts.
--- Quote from: exe on May 28, 2020, 09:04:28 pm ---Afaik, rigol 1054z suffered from using wrong components in PLL, and that caused jitter (apart from layout mistakes). Or that was another oscilloscope...
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You are thinking about project Yaigol on the DS2000 series.
free_electron:
--- Quote from: tom66 on May 28, 2020, 08:33:54 pm ---This is one of the things that confuses me about my current employer.
I am asked to complete BOMs with specific part numbers, rather than a generic classification. This has led me to get calls from the purchasing department along the lines of, "We can't buy 123-456 any more, it's a disaster and we need 25,000 by tomorrow." That turns out to be a 0805 100nF capacitor of which there are hundreds of possible substitutions, with large orders like that being available next day but then I find out we've been paying 300 euros for a reel of parts because they've been marked obsolete and we can only get them from greymarket source X. Sometimes the components are really not critical.
No doubt this has cost us plenty of money too, given these components fluctuate in price and the cheapest supplier will vary as time goes by. I don't know if there's a "generic" catalogue of components, where you can say, use "Generic_0805_100nF_X5R" as a part number and any reasonable part is selected, but I'd love to find out.
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seems like you need a supply chain team ...
tom66:
--- Quote from: exe on May 28, 2020, 09:04:28 pm ---I often see that high-frequency part specify a list of "approved" capacitors with required ESR and ESL. Using a different part may cause problems. May that's why they want to have specific components?
That can also be the case with precision circuits.
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If it was an RF part sure, but most of these parts aren't RF components, they're general purpose decoupling or filter parts. We're talking about 50MHz microcontrollers here, the components are generally not too critical.
I think the funniest call I had from the purchasing department was that a "cost optimisation analysis" had been performed on one of our products. They suggested that we omit the most expensive part on this product, which was the STM32 microcontroller, to save money on making every board. Sure, you can try and build the board without that but good luck.
HobGoblyn:
In my youth, I worked in a small hardware store, in the days where nothing was prepacked etc.
We could spend 30+ mins on a customer wanting to look at 15 different sized screws, then they eventually buy 10 individual screws for about 7 pence.
My boss would later have a polite go at me saying I shouldn’t waste so much time on customers that are only going to be spending a few pence, other customers are waiting to be served, customers with money to spend....
My initial argument was, the guy who got great service when he spent 7 pence, would likely chose us first when he wanted something more expensive. But with very few exceptions, my boss was totally right, the customers that spent 30 mins of my time spending a few pence because they hadn’t a clue what size screw they needed, came back week after week expecting me to open every box for them so they could again spend just a few pence.
Ok no internet, but books galore showed the various screw sizes, they could easily have worked out what size they needed in advance (or at least narrowed it down to two or three choices)
Mr. Scram:
--- Quote from: HobGoblyn on May 29, 2020, 09:51:28 am ---In my youth, I worked in a small hardware store, in the days where nothing was prepacked etc.
We could spend 30+ mins on a customer wanting to look at 15 different sized screws, then they eventually buy 10 individual screws for about 7 pence.
My boss would later have a polite go at me saying I shouldn’t waste so much time on customers that are only going to be spending a few pence, other customers are waiting to be served, customers with money to spend....
My initial argument was, the guy who got great service when he spent 7 pence, would likely chose us first when he wanted something more expensive. But with very few exceptions, my boss was totally right, the customers that spent 30 mins of my time spending a few pence because they hadn’t a clue what size screw they needed, came back week after week expecting me to open every box for them so they could again spend just a few pence.
Ok no internet, but books galore showed the various screw sizes, they could easily have worked out what size they needed in advance (or at least narrowed it down to two or three choices)
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I'd like to counter that I often test the waters before making a big purchase with a small purchase, to see how a company handles customers and service. Sometimes it's just a request for information. While I don't doubt that there are plenty of people you'll never make money on, only putting effort in the whales is a mistake. I need to know I can count on a decent treatment after spending a large chunk of cash.
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