The manufacturing industry is a prime beneficiary of digital technologies. Digitization, also called Industry 4.0, has enormous implications for manufacturers and professionals who buy, sell, design, fabricate, or use electronic components and equipment. Weather, climate and geopolitical events tend to surface weaknesses in the manufacturing pipeline, including electronics fabrication. Chip shortages in 2020 and 2021…
The Covid-19 pandemic highlighted for all of us just how important the safety and sanitization of a site are to manufacturing. Without the proper safety measures, you put your employees and your business at risk. In electronics manufacturing, a variety of risks make safety considerations even more essential. With chemical, electrical, and material hazards all…
Covid-19 created a host of problems for the supply chain logistics and management industry. Businesses have come to realize with little time to prepare how important it is to have a substantive strategy for withstanding rapid and drastic change. Strengthening your supply chain to withstand this change requires keeping in mind the various challenges and…
The ongoing Covid-19 crisis has brought disruption and presented new challenges across every industry. For the electronics manufacturing sector, there are dozens of challenges that accompany the “new normal”—from remote work and stay-at-home orders, to travel restrictions and supply chain complexities. Although businesses have had to rapidly pivot and completely transform their operational standards to…
Disasters have a way of elevating procurement operations to saviors of the day, week or month. But once a crisis has passed, purchasing reverts back to its identity as a corporate cost center. Covid-19 could strengthen purchasing’s position as a corporate risk-management resource. The pandemic has raised the supply chain to a topic of national…
Supply chain leaders across the globe are talking about the promise of blockchain, but there have been few demonstrations of suitable use cases. OEMs are already tiring of blockchain, according to market research firm Gartner. At its recent Gartner Supply Chain Executive Conferences 2019, the firm predicted that by 2023, 90 percent of blockchain-based supply…
Foreign direct investment (FDI) is often viewed through the same lens as on-shoring or re-shoring. From a nation’s perspective, these activities retain or add jobs. FDI is becoming more important – and more global – to businesses, according to The 2019 A.T. Kearney Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) Confidence Index. Almost four-fifths of respondents expect to increase…
The electronics industry has developed some of the most ground-breaking technologies in human history. Yet, the best minds in high-tech have been unable to overcome one of the industry’s most insidious challenges: counterfeit electronics. To some extent, technology advancements have only added to the problem: electronic components can now be cloned so well that they…
Editor’s note: The IoT and the industrial IoT (IIoT) provide the capability for all stakeholders in the electronics supply chain to seamlessly connect and share critical data. Visibility from the moment a component begins production through its end-of-life is possible through these leading-edge applications. But there are also real dangers to the networks that link supply…
The causes, effects and implications of “The Great Component Shortage of 2018” have been thoroughly analyzed. The automotive and IoT industries have been driving unprecedented demand for smaller and more efficient passive electronics, which in turn has stretched lead times for these once- commoditized components to the breaking point. What hasn’t been discussed, however, is the equal…