The march of digitalisation continues but like an army which can only march on its stomach, can digitalisation sustain itself? We are learning of more restrictions placed on microchip exports. These are only adding to the shortage problem that has been affecting the electronics industry for some time.
Even before the covid pandemic, a global shortage of semiconductors was making life difficult for those of us involved in new product development, never mind everyone else in manufacturing!
Semiconductors are used in everything from mobile phones to military equipment; essentially any digital product requires semiconductors. The coronavirus pandemic exacerbated this problem and created the perfect storm with the closure of factories and the demand for technology increasing massively due to more people home working and home educating. Now everyone is catching up and those with deeper pockets are, quite frankly, being selfish and buying out everything they can get their hands on.
The result of this perfect storm has affected the availability of other components as well and created huge supply chain disruptions for manufacturers and new challenges within new product development.
It’s not all doom and gloom. At Sated Design we will work with electronics designers to consider the use of alternative components and then facilitate a clean implementation. By looking again at a product specification and asking the right questions it is possible to move forward and in some cases have increased functionality for the end user.
At Sated Design we have the knowledge and experience to support you as you adapt to an unstable parts market and help you make the best of a difficult situation. If you’d like to talk to us about how we can help, please get in touch.
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