Is the supply chain out of control?
11 October 2010
This was the rather sensationalist question that was the title of the SMART conference’s opening presentation last week.
The conference as a whole was a blend of interesting content and enthusiastic presentation that made the whole experience both worthwhile and enjoyable at the same time.
The opening session was essentially a Q & A with SMART’s Vice-Chairman Graham Naisbitt asking the questions to Bob Gregory. Bob is a specialist at Rolls Royce and also Chairman of the IAG for PB-free Electronics Risk Management (PERM). His experience is probably unfamiliar to many that read this newsletter in that the circuit boards he is responsible for are virtually all assembled using through-hole technology. A brief flirtation with surface-mount has resulted in a QFP being approved for a current generation model, but Bob intends to design that out for future generations. This is not because his products are low technology; it is because they need to withstand a depth-charge test (they are towed out into the sea off the Scottish coast and a depth charge is set off next to them) for them to be approved in the military applications they are designed for. Surface mount components don’t seem as resilient to such a test as their conventional equivalents.
Such boards are also required to last for the duration of the host piece of equipment, which may have initially been intended to be 25 or 30 years, but is frequently 40 or 50 years. So when asked if the supply chain is out of control, Bob has some very specific issues to contend with.
There are a vast number of variables that military suppliers have to contend with. Key among these are changes in legislation (e.g. will lead-free become a requirement in the future), component obsolescence, changes in packaging for components retaining the same part number, counterfeiting, and long term integrity of components that are untested over such a long period.
“If things were stable it would be an easy job” commented Gregory. “The trouble is that it is not just products that evolve but people as well. They change what they buy and who they buy from. With the length of the supply chain this means, also as a result in changes in the test we use, that components are increasingly failing final qualification test.”
“My attitude is of scepticism – in general I don’t believe what I am given is good, but we still need to build with it,” he continued. “So it costs Rolls Royce a huge amount of money in test and qualification. It is interesting how often components within a batch, even one labelled up with the same date, are not homogenous.”
These issues were just the tip of the iceberg for industries requiring such long product lifecycles but the answer to the original question for Bob appeared to be ‘Yes – the supply chain is out of control’. However, I am sure that the supply chain evolves naturally. Technical differentiators, like performance and reliability, will not be the only criteria when specifying parts. Availability, longevity and supportability will become increasingly important during specification and the stronger links in the supply chain will survive while the weaker ones will fail. There is an element of a food chain in the supply chain, and if the fittest survive it may be that some of the issues that plague Bob and others working in military and similar industries will find that the right strategic partners emerge.
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