Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1067105
34 SMT007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2019 Las Marias: When it comes to the shortage and obsolescence of electronic components, another supply chain issue that can arise is counterfeit components. How do you address that? Schoenfelder: That's a great question. At Octopart, we identify authorized sources of inventory. All authorized sources of inventory have to complete a document for review before being listed as authorized. We try to ensure that users are first directed towards any source of inventory that is contractually tied to being able to sell a particular part. For us, that is our primary mechanism for making sure that users are directed just to inventory that has trace- ability and pedigree. Las Marias: From your perspective, what other issues do you see right now in the electronic components supply chain? Schoenfelder: For us, the biggest gap that we see right now for supply chain is every entity is looking for automation today, but that auto- mation is happening very much in the way of mass customization. Every entity is look- ing to do their unique integration of data and resource cloning. That stratification is a huge challenge for an entity like Octopart. There are countless numbers of tools available out there, and they all have moderate usage. I don't think there is a dominant system or source of infor- mation for those systems, and that stratifica- tion creates complexity that makes it challeng- ing for Octopart to be able to integrate with all of them. We find it both on our site and API side that you're constantly amazed by the number of use cases there are for data. Johnson: Dan, I would have to think that at some point, the semiconductor manufactur- ers themselves—the source for all of these components—would want to buy into getting their parts definitions, footprints, and all of the information for their parts put collectively into databases like yours. It seems to me that there's a marketing opportunity for them to prerelease parts that are underway for the engi- neers to start to look at them before they're actually available and search and design them in, increasing their adoption rate—those sorts of marketing approaches using Octopart as a communication channel. Do you see that emerging? Schoenfelder: I do, most definitely. I think that most manufacturers have used their direct and distribution channels to market their products exclusively in the past. Emerging businesses like Octopart provide them with a new medium and path with which to identify demand and potential new users of their products. We defi- nitely see a tighter connection being built between Octopart and component manufac- turers. That is both to drive awareness of new products, but also to make content accessible to new users as well. And again, that content could be as simple as new data sheets and part specifications and parametric information, or it could be stuff that's even more valuable such as CAD content. And when I say CAD content, I'm referring to footprint symbols and 3D renderings primarily. It's interesting, as we survey our user community, we find that CAD models are something needed very frequently in the design of products, but are a huge headache when it comes to creating them themselves— an engineer has to create those models them - selves. We see a huge need being satisfied by getting CAD models. Nolan, to get back to the question you had about how manufacturers are utiliz- ing Octopart, I think making it as simple as possible for someone to design their products in is what they're attempting to accomplish. Octopart is becoming more of a medium for manufacturers to accomplish that. Johnson: Do you find that major distributors like Digi-Key, Mouser, and Element14 are cooperative, or do they find it threatening to have Octopart stepping into this conversation in a place where they used to have it all to themselves? Schoenfelder: We have an incredibly collab- orative relationship with all major distribu-