Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1406534
SEPTEMBER 2021 I SMT007 MAGAZINE 31 of those where we quote without knowing if we're getting the project, so we will need to au- tomate or bring more efficiency to our quoting process to minimize the time it's costing us be- cause we don't know if there will be a return. Nolan Johnson: Given the fact that Whizz does business in the prototype space, I would ex- pect that lead times and snapshots can be ex- tremely volatile right now. How do you adapt to that? For example, you've got your bill of materials resolved and now the bottom drops out somewhere and lead times jump sudden- ly to, let's say, 24 weeks. How do you adjust to that? Irfan: In our business, that's a disaster. When somebody is engaging us and they're really ready to build the board, they say, "Here's a BOM, go buy the parts." But it doesn't happen that way. For most of the boards we are build- ing, we design those. In the design phase, the first order of priority is to establish very high- level components to finalize our architecture and then we say, "We know for sure these eight components are on the board. Put those on or- der." What's our plan for the build? We ask the customer for the first 10, 20, 40, 50 board kits. We will put those on order weekly, even daily, so that during the maybe three or four months of the design phase, we're constantly adding (as the BOM is finalized) all the new parts within a day to our procurement team, and they're put- ting those on order. By the time we finalize the design, we have a final BOM. By the time our engineering completes the design, We have at least 95% of the parts al- ready in stock, and very few items le to take care of. During board fabrication release, we take care of the last couple of components. at's normally how it flows here at Whizz. If a customer is doing their own design, we're going to manufacture for them, and when the customer is experienced, they engage us early in their design phase, and they're handing over their BOMs to us. We're good at managing an evolving BOM; the new BOMs keep coming, and we have a great process internally to man- age the changes expeditiously. By that time, the goal is the same: when they're done with their design we should be ready to manufac- ture the boards. But if somebody comes in at the last minute and says, "Here's a BOM, can you build the board?"… Tough luck these days, that's very hard; even though, we still manage to do it as much as we can. Johnson: e takeaway for anybody working on the design is that once you've specified parts early in the design cycle, you should then start the ordering process and getting some quanti- ties in. Irfan: Yes, definitely. Johnson: Are we seeing lead times continue to run out longer and longer, or has it started to pull in? Last year, lead times were really quite crazy. Are we still seeing that? Irfan: Yes, they're still quite crazy. Nothing has improved. Some things got worse, and gener- ally, we haven't seen any improvement. Johnson: Which components have gotten worse? Irfan: Sometimes these components are in reg- ular supply and suddenly they have lead times because of the actual raw material shortage in the market. ere was a phase where tanta- lum capacitors had a lead time because the raw material to build those capacitors was in short supply. ere was another situation when the fab raw materials for laminators became in short supply. FR-4 became in short supply. We constantly are on the lookout for these. As soon as we see an emerging trend, we work with our suppliers to see if we can pay and take physical possession of components right away, rather than following the traditional just-in- time model. Lot of CMs cannot do that due