Common Issues During Components Sourcing

The importance of electronic component sourcing is too often overlooked by customers preparing a Printed Circuit Board Assembly project. PCB layout of the PCB itself are of course very demanding tasks, but it is important to pay some attention to the actual components that will be soldered to that new PCB board of yours. PCB Assembly Projects with a lot of component issues will often run up against delay or additional cost, complicating the experience for all components involved after submitting a turnkey PCB project to your supplier.

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We have years of experience working in Components Management, and we are ready to help you ensure that your PCB Assembly project is fully optimized. The common issues we notice that can delay the quoting and/or sourcing stage of the project are listed below for your reference. If you refer to this handy guide while building the BOM for your next PCB design, your components should be worry-feel.

• Low-to-No Component Stock

This one is fairly straightforward, but easily to overlook in some case. Many clients fill in their BOM before the PCB layout is completely finished, and stock levels have completely changed by the time our sourcing team receives your order. For this reason, we recommend that you give your BOM a once-over to catch any stock issues just before sending in your order, or you could move the BOM building process to a later stage in the design.

Keep in mind that component vendor listings are not always fully up to date. You might only need 100 out of the 107 that are marked “Available”, but the actual quantity in the warehouse might not agree. It is always better to choose components that have a significant amount of extra component vendor stock.

For components simply are not available in high stock levels, some customers will provide approved substitute part numbers in a separate column of their BOM. Or we can talk about the approved substitute later when our BOM engineer feedback low-to-no component stock.

• Incomplete Part Number

We often seen customers who include only partial part numbers in their BOM, which requires some back-and-forth to sort out exactly what model should be sourced. For example:

GRM0335C1E101 – Refers to a family of capacitors by Murata Electronics

GRM0335C1E101JA01D – Refers to a specific capacitor

Even if our component vendor search for the partial part number turns up only one result, we still have to request your confirmation in order to source a different part number than the exact one listed on your BOM. Orders with multiple partial part numbers can see some significant delay. Again, the optional substitute part number column on your BOM could be used to list multiple family variants, or you could include a note “Any suffix for GRM0335C1E101 is ok”.

• Incomplete BOM Line

Sometimes it can be difficult to judge what exactly needs to be included on your BOM, and important information can end up left out. Generally, the following fields will be required for any BOM.

1. Item Number
2. Reference Designator
3. Quantity per Board
4. Manufacturer Part Number

Additional columns, such as Description, Manufacturer, Notes, or Alternative Part Numbers can help to make the process more efficient, but the four listed above are absolutely required in any PCB assembly projects. To help you with the process, we provide a Sample BOM on our website that can quickly populated with your project’s information.

• Typos

So simple, but very deadly! We certainly would not want your project run into any trouble just because someone missed a “0” in the quantity column, or the types a wrong letter in a part number’s suffix. Our components sourcing team is extremely skilled at catching these types of errors, but you can help to boost the efficiency of your project by simple giving your BOM a quick proofread before you submit your PCB designs.

• Lead Times

This is more often an issue for orders with Consigned Components, where our customers need to get all of the parts to our PCB assembly location by a given date in order for production times to line up properly. In our Full Turnkey Service, you can trust all of the purchasing to our experienced team. We can leverage our long-standing business relationships to get your components shipped faster, and have them better organized for receiving, often for a lower cost than client-directed sourcing would require.

Our advice on this issue is mainly to give our components sourcing team a shot, and we are sure you will be impressed. For orders where consigned components are a necessity, make sure to budget at least an extra day or two for unforeseen circumstances. We will of course work with you at every step to help you to get things on track as soon as possible.

• Unreliable Component Vendors

We only source components from reputable components vendors with whom we have formed long-standing business relationships. As such, we can depend on these vendors to quote accurate lead times for us, and to always supply the right components. Unfortunately, not all vendors are so reliable, and we have seen issues with long delays, missing components, or wrong /fake components in the past. This is the reason for our strict policy to only source from vendors that have fully earned our trust.

Customers will commonly ask us to source components for their order from a lesser—known vendor for larger price breaks, but we strongly discourage this practice. If our customers prefer to make the sourcing and consign the components to us, we can certainly accommodate, but we very much recommend sticking with our approval vendors, even if it means a component change or two.

Our most frequently used component vendors are : Digi-key, Mouser, Element 14, Arrow, Avnet and Future Electronics.

• Obsolete Components

Obsolete components are mainly a concern for repeat orders, where there has been some time between production runs. In these cases, it is helpful for customers to give their BOM a once-over to check for any obsolete components. We can work with you to find replacement components for any obsolete components, and in some situations, we might be able to source a limited quantity to help you out with your next run. The important thing with obsolete components is simply that you are aware of them as early as possible.

• Component MOQ (Minimum Order Quantity)

When browsing for components to suit your PCB assembly project, you should always make sure to keep an eye on the Minimum Quantity, Minimum Oder, or Minimum Order Quantity listing for each component. A part with an MOQ listing of 100 can only be ordered in quantities of 100pcs or more, which might not be economical for your 10pcs PCB Assembly Project.

Make sure to check if your component must be ordered in specific multiples as well, since this is sometimes the case. We need to order some extras of each part to protect us against production loss, so if your component must be ordered in multiple of 100, and we require exactly 100 for order, we either have to order a lot of extras, or find a different solution.

• Component Samples

The most cutting-edge Prototype PCB Assembly projects use the most cutting-edge IC technology, and sometimes that means going directly to the manufacturer. Our PCB Assembly Process can certainly support sample components. The only potential issue here is that component manufacturers can be notably slow in shipping out those sample components.

We recommend that our customers place any orders for samples with the turnkey PCB assembly manufacturer as soon as possible, and certainly well in advance of submitting your PCB design files to us for a quick quote.

These have been the most common issues that occur during component sourcing. With this information in mind, we hope you will be able to work with us to create an efficient and straightforward BOM that allows your PCBA Assembly project to finish quickly at a low cost. If you find yourself with any further questions about our policies around electronic components, please feel free to Contact Us at any time.