As Inelco Hunter explains, buyers are increasingly working alongside engineering, marketing and manufacturing, to explore technology, cost, reliability and product integrity.
The frequency of new product introductions has increased to keep pace with technological change, making shorter lead times and fast product development essential. Purchasing professionals need a non-technical overview of design options at early planning meetings. Indeed, some corporates are now looking to recruit purchasing managers with technical backgrounds.
An example of an overview-type understanding involves the move from individual components to modular solutions integrating multiple components and even software. This will affect future product design, from corporates to SMEs, with modules offering ready-to-go solutions.
Vendor reduction and rapid time-to market are probably the two big wins. Cost-savings from reducing development time by many months will outweigh extra costs in purchasing modules rather than individual components.
One way to obtain a technical overview is partnering with a vendor providing technical advice that offers a general overview and answers questions, no matter how non-technical they may seem. Inelco Hunter offers technical support to engineers and buyers, tailoring answers to technical or non-technical enquiries.
To make the understanding and decision-making process even easier, Inelco Hunter offers product ranges that are simple to understand at an overview level. For example, the Powertip range of touch screen modules takes a straightforward three-level approach.
At the simplest level the Powertip Smart UART family of three-wire smart touch screens features plug-and-play software to speed the design of the graphics interface. From a purchasing viewpoint, as well as being a good start point for new products, the three-wire approach means legacy character-based products can be upgraded to modern touch screens.
The next-level suits more demanding applications. The Powertip MCU range incorporates an STMicroelectronics chip providing the performance required for rapid response times and smooth graphics. From an overview perspective, instrumentation products for example, can quickly plot jitter-free graphs.
Where ultimate power is needed, Inelco Powertip MPU displays utilise NXP or Rockchip quad core processors, providing blindingly fast response times and the ultimate smooth 2D/3D graphics.
www.inelcohunter.co.uk