Daily Investigations

The world economy is really making things difficult in getting parts in.  The lead time in the past was 2-4 weeks and now expect 13-24 weeks.   Get your orders in now so you can talk to your suppliers for expediting those orders for a little quicker delivery time.

I am trying to secure around 500 parts for several hundred devices and reel sizes come into play with that low of quantity.   You really have to investigate and figure out how much excess inventory you will end up with and if you need to just bite the bullet and order an entire reel.

Example , a reel of components will be 2-3K qty but you only need 1K.   Well split the reel up and it ends up costing you almost as much as the entire reel.   It is something you will have to come to grips with when ordering hardware in such small qty.   The bright side is the next wave of equipment you need to purchase you look like a genious with the lower invoices coming in.

Anyway, last thing I will note on this topic is this.   There are companies that do this for a living and I am not talking about assembly houses.  Their markup is not very cost effective because it is not their core competency.   Get with a company that deals in materials management and create part numbers for 275 parts on a board.  You can then ship 200 part numbers (actually 275 individual parts) to the assembly house for stuffing your boards and testing them out.   

If you are trying to procure hardware in this market good luck.