Re:The global chip shortage is starting to have consequences
by Cadwhisker on Sunday May 09, 2021 @11:57PM
(#27102534)
I work at a decent-sized electronics company with several dozen products on the market at any one time. Lead times for chips were usually 12 weeks in normal times. We have forecast sales going off at least 6 months or a year away. We have known where the shortages will be for some months now.
We have already re-spun PCB designs to work in alternate ICs for some of the ones that we know will become unavailable; dual-footprint in case the originals come back. This took time and effort to design and verify and all that work could have gone into the design of new products, but it had to be done. This has put us some number of months behind our original planned dates for our new products.
The problem is that we can see shortages coming up which we cannot work around. We cannot buy enough parts, the lead-times are astonishing. At some point we are going to have to get lucky or halt production.
We have already re-spun PCB designs to work in alternate ICs for some of the ones that we know will become unavailable; dual-footprint in case the originals come back. This took time and effort to design and verify and all that work could have gone into the design of new products, but it had to be done. This has put us some number of months behind our original planned dates for our new products.
The problem is that we can see shortages coming up which we cannot work around. We cannot buy enough parts, the lead-times are astonishing. At some point we are going to have to get lucky or halt production.