-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- design007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueBreaking High-speed Material Constraints
Do you need specialty materials for your high-speed designs? Maybe not. Improvements in resins mean designers of high-speed boards can sometimes use traditional laminate systems. Learn more in this issue.
Level Up Your Design Skills
This month, our contributors discuss the PCB design classes available at IPC APEX EXPO 2024. As they explain, these courses cover everything from the basics of design through avoiding over-constraining high-speed boards, and so much more!
Opportunities and Challenges
In this issue, our expert contributors discuss the many opportunities and challenges in the PCB design community, and what can be done to grow the numbers of PCB designers—and design instructors.
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - design007 Magazine
Altium’s EDDI Report Tracks Components’ Availability—Today and Historically
September 15, 2022 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamEstimated reading time: 3 minutes
There’s one lesson that all designers have learned over the past few years: Components might be here today and gone tomorrow, so tracking your parts is more important than ever. Any resources that help you keep tabs on your required parts are invaluable in these days of 40-week lead times.
Earlier this year, Altium released one such resource: the Electronic Design to Delivery Index (EDDI) report. Assembled from millions of bytes of data gleaned from the Octopart search engineer and the Nexar platform, the monthly EDDI report provides part availability histories going back years, as well as a real-time snapshot of global inventories. It’s free to download.
We asked Dan Schoenfelder, head of Nexar sales, to discuss the EDDI document and why PCB designers should take advantage of this handy report.
Andy Shaughnessy: Dan, welcome. You all have been talking about this EDDI report. I had the chance to review it, and it's pretty interesting. Would you walk me through it?
Schoenfelder: Yes. Altium has a really interesting place in the market, where we have user experiences that span design, supply chain, and manufacturing workflows. Because of that, we have a lot of interesting data that we collect and which we mine to provide trends back to the electronics industry. Any stakeholder in the electronics space can benefit from this information. One of these products is the Electronic Design to Delivery Index, affectionately referred to as the EDDI.
We have two major signals: One is an industry supply signal and the other is an industry demand signal. They're both intended to give stakeholders a view of where the things stand today relative to history for availability of components and how challenging it might be to source components.
Shaughnessy: It was interesting to me that it had a running historical ledger of where parts were. How far back does it go? How granular can you get? Give us some details.
Schoenfelder: The report itself, and the indices that are a part of it, are pegged to a baseline of January 2020. We intentionally did that because it's pre-pandemic and probably the closest thing that any of us can remember to what was normal. The reports that we generate monthly show two years of history compared to January 2020.
In the EDDI, you'll find that we look at an aggregate signal for both demand and supply, but then we break it down further into key categories. These nine categories include integrated circuits, passives, and discrete semiconductors, among others.
Shaughnessy: That's really good. I'm curious where this idea came from.
Schoenfelder: We had this idea to give back to the industry some of the analytics that we’re able to capture. Under the Altium umbrella, we have design tools, a powerful API, and Octopart, the component search engine.
All these different user experiences have user interactions with data. The EDDI takes those interactions and signals of intent that data exhaust, and aggregates and normalizes that into a product that shows trends in demand and supply relevant to stakeholders of the electronic component space.
Shaughnessy: I imagine a lot of this comes through Octopart, right?
Schoenfelder: Most definitely; portions of the EDDI are fortified by Octopart, such as inventory trends and search activity.
Shaughnessy: And Nexar also includes other search engines, so you've got a wide universe to cull this data from.
Schoenfelder: That’s a good point. We like to talk about our signals as having both breadth and depth. Octopart itself sees several million unique visitors per month. The Nexar API receives about 15 million calls per week. So there's significant activity that provides us a broad but granular signal of what's happening in the industry. There’s no question that market conditions have driven a lot of activity over the last 18 months or so.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the September issue of Design007 Magazine, click here.
Suggested Items
Zentech First to Adopt IPC Apprenticeship National Program Standards
05/20/2024 | Cory Blaylock, IPCIPC achieved a landmark in 2023 by creating an apprenticeship program approved by the U.S. Department of Labor. With such a registered framework in place, industry can work through IPC to secure local, state, and federal dollars for workforce development in a way they’ve never been able to do before. Zentech Manufacturing, headquartered in Baltimore, Maryland, with production facilities in Bloomington, Illinois, and Richardson, Texas, is the first employer partner to adopt IPC’s national program. Click here to read their story.
Danutek Celebrates 20 Anniversary
05/20/2024 | DanutekDanutek, a leading supplier of capital equipment and service support to the electronics manufacturing sector in Europe, proudly marks its 20th anniversary this year.
Additive Manufacturing: PCB007 Magazine May 2024 Issue
05/20/2024 | I-Connect007 Editorial TeamThough modern semi-additive and fully additive technologies are still emerging for PCB manufacturing, additive technology itself is not new. In this month’s issue, we explore additive manufacturing technology for the PCB fabricator: where it stands today, the true benefits, and where it seems to be headed.
Real Time with… IPC APEX EXPO 2024: Insulectro on Attracting Young Talent to the Electronics Manufacturing Industry
05/16/2024 | Real Time with...IPC APEX EXPOInsulectro's Doug Gotelli and Mitchell Benson explore the challenges of drawing young talent into the electronics manufacturing industry. They underscore the significance of manufacturing and the urgency of tackling the workforce shortage. They also discuss internship programs, the industry's resilience amid the pandemic, and the rewarding experiences of working in this sector.
European Chips Skills Academy Launches Summer School in Italy to Promote Microelectronics Industry Careers
05/16/2024 | SEMIUniversity students will connect with professors to explore semiconductor learning paths and employment opportunities at the European Chip Skills Academy Summer School, August 18-23, 2024 in Bologna, Italy.