This week we are joined by Brett and Magnus from Worthington to talk about parts and parts purchasing. They answer frequent questions customers ask us about parts and provide a few part related recommendations.


Intro

• Brett and Magnus give us a brief overview of what they do at Worthington and what they did before joining Worthington.
• We reflect on a twelve pound circuit board we are making and some of the challenges that come along with building something so big!
• Brett and Magnus discuss the differences in the part buying process for Worthington vs CircuitHub.
• How has COVID-19 affect parts purchasing and shipping?

Questions from customers

• Why is this out of stock?
• Why is my order held up? (What causes delays in delivering a product to a customer?)
• Why are these parts more expensive than when we previously bought them?
• We talk about how tariffs on parts get handled and billed (it’s not as simple as you might think).
• What is markup and why does it exist?

Recommendations to customers

• Use parts that are widely available in the supply chain.
• Specify alternative parts that can be substituted whenever possible.
• Keep the lifecycle of the part in mind when designing your board - don’t use parts that are obsolete or nearing their EOL.
• Keep MOQs in mind.
• Small decisions early on can have a huge impact later on.
• Avoid using parts from hobbyist website - they are great for your personal projects but are not designed for professionally produced products.
• Be very careful (and sometimes suspicious) of buying parts from unauthorized distributors.
• Ask us if there’s anything different that they could do to improve the purchasing process?

Up next
We’ll continue the second half of the conversation in the next episode to discuss this things we wish customers knew and the whole subject of consignment.  

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