Issue link: https://iconnect007.uberflip.com/i/1470111
JUNE 2022 I DESIGN007 MAGAZINE 71 supply-chain issues. Whether the lack of avail- able components meant that the EE had to stop his or her current activities and go back and manually research potential alternate parts not existent in the master library, submit a new library part request, create new circuitry, design a new section of the circuitry, or whether it forced me (the PCB layout designer) to redo a section of the board layout, the iterations and delays became extremely frustrating for the able to supply-chain volatility since the engi- neering and sourcing hand off is highly linear and not built with resilience in mind. Designs are seeing multiple cycles of BOM review and analysis of alternatives resulting in re-design events and/or outright extensions of sched- ules. On a recent project I worked on, it seemed that at every daily project meeting, there was always something new to address regarding Figure 4: High-level view of the general design and sourcing process. Figure 5: The average number of times engineers must remove an electronic component from their board design due to availability, lifecycle, or compliance.