As we celebrate our 20th anniversary of Electronics Sourcing, editor Jon Barrett embraces the title as longest serving editor in the UK electronics industry.
It seems like yesterday that I sat down with Electronic Sourcing’s publisher, Mark Leary, to decide on the title’s editorial mantra for the first issue. In reality, that was 20 years ago and the mantra then remains today: what to buy, where to buy and how to buy.
Every magazine launch I’ve been involved in over my 40-year editorial career has come with some trepidation and Electronics Sourcing was no different. At the time, probably 98 per cent of editorial and advertising content in the electronics industry was directed at the design department and production floor. Was there a need for a magazine that discussed the commercial, rather than technical, aspects of electronics manufacturing?
In reality, things were changing, and the purchasing department’s role was rapidly evolving. The rate of technical innovation was accelerating, time-to-market was shrinking and outsourcing was either driving production offshore or centralising it in the UK amongst a new generation of contract electronics manufacturers.
With production starting to be shared between the UK, Eastern Europe and China, domestic distributors evolved into pan European companies and then global organisations.
It was at this point, the spotlight started to shine bright on the purchasing department. Components needed to be sourced and supplied to different factories, countries and continents depending on a product’s maturity and volume. Bills-of-materials that had remained unchanged for months, if not years, started to receive monthly, sometimes weekly, updates as technological change raced forward and obsolescence reared its head.
However, throughout this seismic shift, the nature of distribution remained steady. Printed catalogues and sales representatives were still the chosen links between manufacturer and distributor. Then came the tipping point: digitisation.
Distributors that once considered their inventory position a trade secret decided to share that information in real time. Printed catalogues gave way to parametric search engines. Telephone orders were replaced by ecommerce systems. Local distributors were being outperformed on delivery by companies in different continents.
During one meeting, a semiconductor company explained how one customer’s design department classed it as the world’s leading engineering authority, yet it was on the brink of losing the contract because the purchasing department was unhappy with the product delivery performance. It was at this point I knew purchasing had reached parity with design.
The rest is history, Electronics Sourcing launched into Europe and North America, followed by a series of live events including the current Electronic Component Show.
Regardless of having trained as a product designer, worked as a design engineer and edited magazines across design, manufacturing and purchasing, every day remains a learning opportunity. So where next for component purchasing? The answer is obvious: AI. Not consumer AI. The type of AI that can predict demand and control the supply chain accordingly. That alone could keep me busy for another 20 years.
As a final aside, someone mentioned my 20-year tenure with Electronics Sourcing makes me the longest serving editor in the UK electronics industry, which I find amusing.
