Jon Barrett
Editor of Electronics Sourcing UK, North America and Europe
During his publishing career, Jon has continued to develop his mechanical, electronic and software skills ranging from recent qualifications in precision welding to the development of hosted business software.
What price a battery?
Calling any readers with intimate knowledge of the full EV battery supply chain. I need your advice. I have a saying ‘show me the incentive and I’ll show you the future’. Well around the world, governments are pushing people to switch to electric vehicles with a combination of legal and financial incentives, so it will happen. I’ve always assumed that governments green flag these futuristic societal changes by simply giving what they think…
2023: year of the digital twin and API
I wonder if it’s time to swap ‘just-in-time’ supply chains for ‘efficient and robust’ supply chains. To me, using the JIT descriptor suggests every supply chain process is in perfect lockstep with every other to the nearest minute. That isn’t the case and never will be. Ultimately, someone, somewhere is always ‘holding the baby’. Driving ‘work in progress’ towards zero, for every component on a bill-of-materials, across every process step—from mining raw materials to soldering…
Sidestepping the demographic pyramid
Over recent weeks I’ve had the pleasure of attending a number of engineering exhibitions and working on the production of over thirty Executive Forecast features across the North American and UK editions of Electronics Sourcing. Every conversation and interaction offered a unique perspective of what we can expect in 2023, however some trends emerged. Allow me to expand on two. Firstly, at this phase of the post pandemic reset, the industry is starting to experience,…
John Denslinger
Editorial contributor to Electronics Sourcing
John Denslinger is a former executive VP Murata, president SyChip Wireless, and president/CEO ECIA, the industry’s trade association. His career has spannned up to 40 raw years in electronics.
Recession or recovery?
In this article, John Denslinger reminds readers that even in a recessionary environment, next-gen electronics technologies and applications will still see growth. Forecasting 2023 is a challenge given so much economic uncertainty. Will it be recession or recovery that dominates the calendar? It’s anyone’s guess as there seems to be no common path forward. A prolonged contraction suggests a year of sluggish economic growth. But, if the Fed can tame inflation, minimise employment losses, stabilise…
AI unknowns outweigh knowns
John Denslinger explores the growing role of artificial intelligence in business environments and offers an opinion on the recently published Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights AI is largely desired for its data analytics, but generally comes with embedded algorithms particularly in customer, employment and productivity software packages often unbeknownst to procurement teams. Likewise, large enterprise platforms updated by outside vendors may introduce additional or modified AI functions likely enhanced by cloud-based machine-learning systems….
Workplace upper hand
In the face of a changing economy, John Denslinger encourages employers to value the people they have; employees to maximise their productive; and new hires to be flexible. Office productivity in the American workplace is second to none. For years, tech companies invested heavily in computational power, interactive systems, decision tools and global communication links allowing worker productivity to soar. That trend continues today as companies accelerate investments in cloud services and massive data storage…
James Carbone
Editorial contributor to Electronics Sourcing
A veteran journalist, James was a writer and editor for Electronics and Purchasing magazines for 21 years. He covered electronics distribution, semiconductors, passives and connectors for the magazines.
DRAM price increases will ease
There should be ample supply of DRAM through the rest of the year as memory IC manufacturers continue to increase capacity. Memory IC buyers can expect a 2-5 per cent increase in prices for DRAM this year as the market grows 25 per cent to $118 billion because of continued strong demand from the computer segment especially from servers used in data centers. It will mark the second straight year of 20 per cent or…
Specialist distributors expect another strong year for sales
Component demand remains healthy, prices are increasing and some component lead times are still long. Specialist electronics distributors are cautiously optimistic that strong component demand will continue through the year and sales growth will rise to high single-digit or double-digit levels this year. Some specialist distributors express concern that electronics buyers scheduled orders last year for 2022 because of long lead times for crucial semiconductors and other components and that purchase orders would weaken this…
Lead times will remain long for discretes through 2022
Prices for MOSFETS, IGBTs and rectifiers increased in 2021 and there could be more price hikes in 2022. Buyers can expect continued tight supply for discrete semiconductors through most of 2022 but supply could loosen towards the end of the year and lead times for some discretes could shrink a bit. However, lead times will still remain long with some chip manufacturers saying that MOSFETs, rectifiers and transient voltage suppressors (TVS) will have lead times…