TECH TALK

A journal of bus architecture tips & techniques

Holiday Cheer for Quick Delivery

‘Tis the season to celebrate, even when it concerns receiving your industrial computing parts on time.  There is not much cheer when delivery is pushed out a couple of extra weeks or more due to the holidays.  Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years force manufacturers to slow production.  Some reduce year-end inventories, compounding the problem.  Are there industrial computing suppliers offering fast shipment?  You bet there are!

How industrial computer manufacturers manufacture and why deliveries can take so long
It’s common to experience deliveries of four weeks or greater for boards, enclosures, and components built for PC/104, VMEbus, CompactPCI, or AdvancedTCA.  Some standard parts are stocked.  However, a large number of computing products carry a lengthy delivery, especially VMEbus and AdvancedTCA boards, PMCs, enclosures, board level instruments, and special I/O.  Extended temperature, ruggedization, and customization will certainly increase the ship date.  How these products are manufactured contributes to the problem.

Our industry is populated with mostly small manufacturers who build low volumes of standard or customized products.  Production is usually scheduled after customers’ orders are received.  This manufacturing method has names like build-to-order, batch, flow, etc.  The method provides a lot of advantages for both manufacturer and customer:  improved quality, improved productivity, and reduced costly inventories of finished goods.  Most of all, a product can be customized to exactly match the customer’s requirements.  The down side is waiting for the product to be built.  Many manufactures stock their most popular items; however, it is difficult to stock all flavors of a product.  For example, a CompactPCI single board computer may have options for CPU speed, memory size, flash size, rear I/O, I/O interfaces, etc.  A standard board can have dozens of configurations.  You would be fortunate to find a particular configuration sitting on the manufacturer’s shelf.

Where to turn for quick delivery
Here is good news:  there are manufacturers that stock industrial computing parts and can deliver in a pinch.  Sierra Sales works with several who keep on hand such commonly purchased parts or systems as:

• VMEbus and CompactPCI enclosures and backplanes
• IEEE 1101.1 and 1101.10 hardware which include panels, handles, bezels, and card guides
• Single board computers for PCI, CompactPCI, PC/104, and other embedded form factors
• Industrial / rackmount PC enclosures, CPUs, systems, and parts
• Data acquisition and other I/O boards

Below is a list of companies and types of industrial computing goods they keep available throughout the year.  In some cases, a customized enclosure, backplane, or system can be delivered in two to four weeks instead of the normal six to eight.

Sierra Sales can help you locate quick ship sources for industrial computing products.  Contact your local sales engineer to discuss your next project.

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