Richardson Electronics, Ltd. (NASDAQ: RELL) announced today an exclusive manufacturing and global distribution agreement with Battery Street Energy (BSE) to manufacture ultracapacitor-based engine start modules for use in various markets and applications including the wireless telecom industry and in critical facilities. In collaboration with BSE, Richardson Electronics will be manufacturing these modules using BSE’s patent-pending…
Labor and supply constraints continue to limit U.S. manufacturing momentum even as demand remains robust. The nation’s leading factory index, the PMI, declined 4 percent in April, but depleted customer inventories and increasing factory backlogs bode well for the long-term health of the industry. “Recent record-long lead times, wide-scale shortages of critical basic materials, rising…
Even in the most challenging of economies, electronics companies design new products. Component makers and distributors that assist OEMs with their designs stand to benefit from high margins or volume orders once an item reaches mass production. Catalog distributors that specialize in low-volume, high-mix design and engineering orders, such as Mouser Electronics, weather market volatility…
Optimism in the electronics market is surging, according to ECIA, bolstering data from a national manufacturing index that reached a 37-year high in March. The ECIA’s Electronic Component Sales Trend (ECST) monthly survey, which assesses month-to-month sales growth sentiment, leapt up between 26 and 27 points in component and end-market measures from February to March.…
The electronics sector helped drive U.S. manufacturing activity to a 37-year high in March as pent-up demand emptied customers’ shelves and firmed up expectations for a widespread economic recovery. There are no signs demand will abate, according to the Institute for Supply Management, although factories will face supply and labor constraints at least through the…
Demand remains high for U.S.- made products even as manufacturers contend with price increases, labor shortages and supply constraints. The Institute for Supply Management’s PMI reached a three-year high in February to 60.8, an increase of 2.1 percentage points from the January reading. Signs for future demand remain strong, but supply chain pressures are unlikely…
As semiconductors become scarce in 2021, companies in the electronics supply chain are seeking better visibility into long-term chip demand. Two research reports shed some light on why visibility, in general, is so hard to achieve. More than half the companies recently surveyed by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) rely on their own data for…
Unsurprisingly, the electronics industry is reacting favorably to President Biden’s executive order to review critical U.S. supply chains. The Covid-19 pandemic exposed the United States’ dependence on foreign supplies including semiconductors and materials used in PPE, medical tests and pharmaceuticals. Reliance on foreign sources is not a new issue in electronics but tariffs, the China-U.S.…
A perfect storm of events have converged to create the semiconductor shortage of 2021. High-level collaboration across the electronics supply chain could make the deficit less painful, experts say. Shortages often prompt less-than-optimum purchasing behaviors. Competitive bidding for inventory drives prices up. Exceptions to approved vendor lists become common. And double-ordering – where purchase orders…
The burgeoning semiconductor shortage of 2021 hit chipmakers “like a ton of bricks,” according to one distributor. Of course, that’s not the phrase semiconductor suppliers would use. But the supply chain is in the midst of a perfect storm. A convergence of events is creating what’s expected to be a shortage of CPUs, MPUs, memory,…