Texas Instruments - what's your view on SMPS shortage outlook?

[Martin F]

As some of you probably know, TI has had significant shortages and delays on switch mode power supplies, causing a lot of pain for many.

We're trying to plan ahead in terms of sourcing alternatives vs. awaiting deliveries - and wanted to hear what your thinking is in terms of the outlook. Do you think TI will get capacity to start producing SMPS parts in e.g. 2022 H2, or will it take longer before things start getting back to normal?

[tszaboo]

There isn't a shortage of production. All the missing parts I have are available in large quantities.
The issue is that they are not available from the authorized distributors, for the agreed upon price.
All the production seems to go to china for scalpels. Either directly or through the regular distributors.
This is a policy issue, and a trade war, not a component shortage.

[Martin F]

We also experience the challenge with 3rd parties speculating in parts, though even through such providers we've found the supply of some SMPS to be limited to e.g. batches of 500-1000 pcs (at 10-20x the usual price).

[mazurov]

TI parts can be bought directly from their website. Even when they are not available, you can set up an e-mail alert, which often comes 2-3 days prior to Digikey's. This alert also shows what "52 weeks" really mean - looks like placeholder entered automatically when stock is low, at least for the parts I'm interested in.

This is even better for Microchip. They ship any quantity 2-day from Malaysia free of charge.

[station240]

Even direct from TI's own store, there are still varying levels of available.
1. In stock
2. In stock - you can actually buy (more on that later)
3. Future Inventory - More units week of day month 2022
4. Future Inventory - More units week of day month 2022 - you can actually buy (more on that later)
5. Out of stock
6. Out of stock - replaced by newer part
7. Out of stock - replaced by newer part which is also out of stock!

So what's this "you can actually buy" stuff about then?
Firstly the website can be 20 minutes behind the actual warehouse stock.
Then you have to be an actual company to buy some parts (no free gmail/hotmail accounts).
Then you have to not be using anything that might block all their 3rd party tracking, popup notifications,  captchas, cookies 
Some parts are more strict on who can buy them, dunno why.
Finally TI have multiple warehouses around the world, and try to ship from the nominal one for your country, if the parts you want are in multiple warehouses you can buy some but not others.

It's all a huge pain, took me hours to figure out how to get one order to go thru.
You can add parts to your cart, but then have the site demand you remove them at checkout as they cannot be fulfilled (but still be in stock the next day!).

The "More units week of" thing is them drip feeding parts into the market, say 500 this week (who knows when), another 500 the week after, etc.
Of course this is not obvious, so if you don't happen see the stock appear that week, then it seems like the expected date keeps slipping.

[mazurov]

Firstly the website can be 20 minutes behind the actual warehouse stock.

I can live with that as long as they are ahead of everyone else (so far always).

Then you have to be an actual company to buy some parts (no free gmail/hotmail accounts).

My gmail works just fine.

Then you have to not be using anything that might block all their 3rd party tracking, popup notifications,  captchas, cookies 

My experience differs here as well.

Some parts are more strict on who can buy them, dunno why.

Export restrictions, perhaps? I discovered recently that some pretty peacefully looking parts can fall under those. One example is BQ24179 - who knew?