Tackling the test bottleneck in the supply chain

测试是埃尔的主要瓶颈之一ectronics supply chain, and independent distributor Fusion Worldwide earlier this year acquired Prosemi Mfg Pte Ltd, a large-scale electronic component test house in Singapore.

With the supply chain experiencing historic constraints leading to lengthy turnaround times, the deal cut lead times by weeks and boosted the distributor’s quality assurance and device verification capabilities.

“This is one of many critical pieces for the supply chain for us,” said Tobey Gonnerman, president of Fusion Worldwide told eeNews Europe for World Supply Chain Day on 21st April. “We are one of the largest independent distributors in the world but we are not the manufacturer or a franchised distributor so the perception is there is an inherent risk as we didn’t have direct traceability of parts.”

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绝大多数半导体仍在短supply he says.

“The list of product that people aren’t looking for is the shorter one,” he said. “The amount of requests and requirements is staggering. It is at least 50x what it was a year ago, and it’s across the board, all the major manufacturers, on active semiconductors, not as much on the passive and electromechanical, and there are spot shortages on the system level side such as CPUs, memories and storage.”

“We have lived the whole outsourced testing experience for many years and the lead times right now for test houses is three to five weeks but we have been able to eliminate that and get that down to a couple of days,” he said “We can even jump our own queues, and those three or four weeks can be pretty critical for a gating part that the rest of the board is waiting for.”