Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1069358
20 PCB007 MAGAZINE I JANUARY 2019 to look at designing for the long-term supply chain. More and more devices are going to become electronic, so the market itself is going to continue to expand, making it increasingly difficult to get larger parts. That's what I would tell designers. Matties: Do you have designers on your employee list as well, and do you offer that as a service? Martin: No, we work with outside services if a customer needs design. I have component engineering on my side that reports to me. We do a lifecycle analysis on the component using predictive modeling, and it's on a scale of one to five. I tell designers that unless you're in the leading-edge technology, you want to stay away from parts in lifecycle one. Those are brand new parts, and they're not accepted in the market. The prices are very high, and there are very few manufacturers. If you're putting in a new design, you want to look for a lifecycle two to three and a half. A two means that it's starting to grow, more manufacturers are coming in, prices are dropping, and supply is higher. Lifecycle three is when the greatest number of manufacturers are there. It's at its lowest price point, and it gives you the largest supply chain opportunity. Once you start dropping below three and a half or four, the parts decline, manufacturers move out of the market, and prices go up. And, of course, five is obsolete. If you're doing a new design, in the BOM analysis we do for customers, we show them the lifecycle of the parts and say, "You have to know the lifecycle of your end item. How long and how does it match with the lifecycle of the components?" But if you're in a new design and looking at components that are already headed towards the declining stage, you will have supply chain problems. Matties: You're right. Designers should be aware of this fact at the beginning. Martin: In my experience, most of the engineers are somewhat insulated from the supply chain so that they really don't know the lifecycle of those components. However, it's probably the most critical aspect in a new design to make sure you have sustainability on it. Matties: How many designers contact you with the BOM review before they do their designs? Martin: We've been pretty aggressive at doing these BOMs. We do two things for our customers including a BOM health analysis, where we do the lifecycle of the parts and show them the MLCC situation. On those MLCCs, I'm crossing Murata's end-of-life list to all of their components by the voltage, microreference, and dielectrics. We tell them which are going to be their troublesome long-term parts, and we also do an inventory and bumper stock model where we pull in the market lead times. When I do these with customers, it opens their eyes. With the customers that we've done it with, they push pretty hard on their internal design teams to be very aware of what's happening and get ahead of the curve. It is effective when it's done. Nolan Johnson: From where you sit, how would you recommend the designers get more of that information? Obviously, once they're doing the analysis with you on what they think is their finished design, any problems may cause them to have to go back and do a complete redesign. Hopefully, it's not that serious, but that's sort of the dynamic that's getting set up here. If they can make better decisions in the design tool and give you a better BOM and I tell designers that unless you're in the leading-edge technology, you want to stay away from parts in lifecycle one.