Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1406534
50 SMT007 MAGAZINE I SEPTEMBER 2021 128K, all these different variations, and then that gets people dependent upon those differ- ent variations. at's part of what we're going through right now that makes substitution so difficult. at's when you start to see the man- ufacturers consolidate. In 2018, there were a couple of passive man- ufacturers who said they were doing away with all their big sizes. I don't know if they ever did, but that will happen. Components will con- solidate. You've got fewer to choose from and fewer variations, fewer part numbers, and the fab lines are turning out a smaller number of components. at starts to mitigate the situa- tion a little bit. I suspect that's going to happen again. It seems like the end of the world, but I remember when that happened in 2018 and our component suppliers were saying, "I've never seen it like this in my 20 years of busi- ness," "is is worse than it's ever been," and, "is could be a four-year problem." It's awful when you're in the middle of it. But engineers adjust. ese engineers who are having such a terrible time spec'ing this stuff are smart. ey engineer things. ey'll engineer a process. e engineer that gets burned by one particular component manu- facturer isn't going to use them anymore. My suspicion is that by early 2022, we'll be in a lot more sustainable situation. Johnson: Maybe just in time isn't the most effective strategy for this part of your process? Benson: We have a globally intertwined economy. Personally, I don't think that's a bad thing. I think the more interde- pendent we all are on each other, the better off we all are in the long run. But it can lead to problems. Interdependent should not equal "sole source" from one manufacturer or from one region. is interdependence transcends in- dustries too. I don't know how many people know that electronics manufac- turing and passenger air travel are tight- ly linked. Before the pandemic hit, much of the fast response component orders piggybacked on commercial passenger flights. You might think a flight from Hong Kong to the western U.S. would be jam-packed full of people. Quite oen they're not, because they need the extra weight capacity for fuel and cargo. Well, when passenger flights are 80% down, all those or- ders must go someplace else. ey go into shipping containers. Guess what? ere aren't enough shipping containers. Guess what? ey can't build more shipping containers because steel is in short supply. Why? Because the steel manufacturers were hit hard by COVID. Guess what? ere isn't enough port capacity to load and unload these things to free up the shipping containers. at's the price you sometimes pay for a globally interconnected economy. Johnson: A situation like this usually triggers some sort of innovation. Benson: ere are a couple things that I would really love to see from the silicon vendors, es- pecially the microcontroller folks I mentioned. As most engineers know, you get one part and there are two, four, six, eight, a dozen parts in that product line. If you need the 16K version, a 32K will work perfectly fine, except that the configurations are different; you can't just swap Reels of parts.