Your Electronic Components Supplier - 3 Signs You Can Trust Them
Posted by Jenny Miller on Tue, Mar 02, 2010 @ 02:06 PM
Finding the right business partner to help your electronic components shortage and EOL situations is critical and can be time consuming. Looking for signs in these three areas will help you move forward with greater confidence.
Area #1 - ISO Certification
ISO Certification is the largest non-governmental producer of system-wide standards for business, government, and societies throughout the world. The standards established for ISO extend to the electronic components world, ensuring that ISO Certified companies are trustworthy business partners.
Make sure that your business partner is ISO 9001:2008 certified, proving they have the most current certification available.
The ISO certification logo look like:
Spotting this on a website is an easy way to see the ISO affiliation of your electronic parts supplier, but you can always ask the question.
ISO certification is a good place to start, but there can be others that impact your electronic components sourcing process as well:
- RoHS compliance - A UK specific standardization for the electronics components industry
- QMI - SAI Global - A third party organization that rigorously evaluates companies to improve their process and pass electronic component industry evaluation. At times, including on the IC Trends website, you'll see their logo revealing an ISO certification that has been processed through them.
In short, make sure that the electronic parts distributor you're leaning on to get your components have trusted third party certification.
Area #2 - Background Check
Even though it sometimes comes down to the last minute, it helps if you can gather information prior to your parts need. With the technology we have at our fingertips, you can spend 30 minutes online and find out some great information about your potential component partner. You can Google their company name to find out where they've been in the news and what's being said about them. If there are groups of people that received counterfeit parts from them, you want to know that.
Another tool any reputable component supplier should give you is a list of references. These references should be able to ask you some basic questions that help you to know if you want to move forward.
• Was their response time adequate and professional?
• Did they provide you with a solid quote at the right price?
• Did the components show up on time?
• Were they the right parts?
• How likely are you to use them again to supply your electronic component needs?
Professional forums and blogs can also be of help. Sites like Electronic Components: Allocation, Lead Times & Shortages , PC's Electronic Component Blog , and Onlinecomponents.comblog can give you great industry information and answer questions about your business partner in question.
Area #3 - Communication Certainty
In a capacitor, diode, resistor or other shortage situation you can spend a lot of time on the phone hammering out the details before you get the chance to vet them completely. There are certain things you can look for to know that your electronic components distributor partner is on the way to getting your parts in place at the eleventh hour. One step is to make sure they have a reasonable next-contact time frame. If you submit an online RFQ you should get a call or email back within 24 hours.
You also want them to be asking great questions so that they can provide you with a great quote, fast. These questions should look like:
• What is the manufacturers part #?
• Can you take a Cross?
• Do you have a date code restriction?
• Do these need to be RoHS Compliant?
• When do you need them on your dock?
• How many?
• Do you have a price history or target price?
If and when a component shortage situation happens you need to have a partner that's part of your team. Although it takes a bit of time and energy to find a dependable component supplier, the pay off is someone you can trust as your business moves forward.