Simpler products = greater availability

While high-tech devices—basically anything with a microchip—remain largely unavailable, items with simpler materials and mechanics may be breaking through the supply chain logjam and gaining some availability.

“We’re finding the majority of lead times for products are actually shrinking a bit from 25-35 weeks to about 20 weeks, while lead times for most brands of discrete semiconductors and passive components are really shrinking. They’re also produced in large volumes, which is starting to bring some prices down,” says Uma Pingali, business president at Newark. “On the other hand, high-end devices with microcontrollers and semiconductors, such as PLCs and field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), still have one-year lead times. They usually also require more customization and integration, which gives engineering managers an even greater challenge when they have to wait 40-50 weeks for them to arrive. We’re still in a pressure situation, and mainly concerned with what we can’t get, but some are getting easier to source.”

See with user eyes

While it’s true that suppliers and distributors have always put themselves in the shoes of their customers to serve them better, this traditional strategy is even more important for enduring hard times and reaching brighter days. Beyond finding and securing inventory, Pingali explains that distributors and suppliers are likewise preoccupied with user experience (UX) and what their customers want to know about as their processes and technologies become more digitalized, and require 24/7 availability and support.