Creativity is the smartest distribution skill
Author: EIS Release Date: Mar 29, 2023
Distribution companies need to develop solutions that are new and creative to solve today’s design challenges, says Roger Tall of Charcroft Electronics.
Creativity is the smartest distribution skillWhen global market conditions place obstacles in the path of an engineer, hampering the ability to complete a design on time and on budget, the distribution industry must use creativity to deliver new solutions.
The focus for most distributors is stocking and selling components that are used in high volume. The semiconductor category has the highest number of devices on most line cards. Component manufacturers share this focus and, if given a choice, often opt for a strategy to manufacture higher volume commercial devices rather than a lower volume of high-reliability parts.
This places original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) of mission-critical or high-reliability systems in an awkward position. These OEMs manufacture in comparatively low volumes and have to manage the lead times for high-reliability components, which are longer than for the commercial version of the same device.
Failure-free design
Distribution partners can help OEM engineers develop mission-critical or high-reliability systems by starting the design with a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) component, before moving to a higher reliability or qualified version of the same device for the final circuit. This reduces both cost and time because commercial devices have a lower cost and shorter lead times than the fully qualified component.
With passives, it is vitally important that the distributor checks that the component is available with the same value, voltage and case size at all reliability levels. For example, at one time only 25% of the values of a particular COTS tantalum capacitor were also available at space grade.
In another example, one manufacturer offers four grades of reliability for magnetic components: commercial; low orbit; space qualification or engineering; and the final space flight version.
Using an automotive-grade passive device that is AEC-Q200 qualified gives another level of reliability between COTS and Mil-PRF and there are also components on the European preferred parts list, or qualified parts list (QPL) from the European Space Components Coordination to consider.
A distributor with a franchise for a component manufacturer can offer additional custom testing and take a capacitor to a level of reliability that is even higher than parts on the QPL. By ‘thinking outside the box’, it can also provide technical support, which helps to ensure a smooth design process.
Archiving traceability
Using creativity to develop customised distribution software can also affect component traceability. Many distributors include a Certificate of Conformity (CofC) with orders for Mil-Spec or high-reliability components, but it is often the responsibility of the OEM to retain the CofC.
This system works for a commercial end product that has a comparatively short lifetime, but not when the components are used in end products that are mission-critical and have a lifetime measured in decades. It is the difference between the operational life of a smartphone compared to that of a jet plane or spacecraft.
Using customised IT software can include a CofC with every delivery and a digital copy of every CofC can be archived. A CofC archive was used recently to provide a duplicate of a CofC that was issued almost 20 years ago.
Manufacturing custom solutions
The information on the CofC not only helps to resolve issues during component lifetime, but can also help to identify a replacement when a passive component is obsolete.
With in-house custom manufacturing a distributor can deliver a component to fit an exact specification or occupy a challenging board space. This can help to manage obsolescence, or solve an issue with a particularly difficult new design, by manually manufacturing a single capacitor, or housing multiple capacitors in a single custom case.
For a distributor to actively support OEMs, it must go beyond the basics of simply quoting, delivering components, and offering standard technical support and value-added services. There is a need to have the creativity to develop new solutions that respond quickly to new design challenges and to threats from the wider market.