Supply Chain Insight

Parent article: Adding Supply Chain Information to a Vault-Based Component

As a designer, the ability to specify, at design time, which Manufacturer Parts can be used to implement your design components, gives you greater control and effectively streamlines the procurement process. You don't wait anxiously after design data is sent to manufacturing, wondering if the components procured for assembly will perfectly reflect your design intent. You are in the driving seat, with procurement able to see your choices at an early stage.

But sometimes even the best laid plans can go astray. What happens if you had a single part choice and that part is now no longer available? Or maybe a price change to a component could cause blow-out costs during manufacturing and assembly. In this case, the ability to make design-time part choices loses its edge if you are unaware of such changes to cost and availability of the very parts you have 'authorized' to be used.

To retain the advantage that design-time part choices provides, Altium Designer delivers real-time display of cost and availability for chosen parts directly within the Schematic Editor as you design. This is facilitated by extending the software's Design Insight feature to include Supply Chain Insight.

Supply Chain Insight is enabled and configured from the System – Design Insight page of the Preferences dialog (DXP » Preferences).

Enable and configure Supply Chain Insight as part of system preferences.

As you hover the mouse over a component on a schematic sheet, supply chain information will be displayed in the Supply Chain Insight pop-up, provided that:

• The component has been placed from an Altium Vault – it is an instance of a named-revision of a Component Item in that vault, and
• The component has part choices made for it – at least one Manufacturer Part has been chosen in the component's associated Part Choice List Item.

Example supply chain information accessed by hovering over a vault-based component on the schematic sheet.

Suddenly seen that a chosen part is not available, or that its price no longer justifies its use? No problem. You can access the Part Choices dialog and make changes to the list of Manufacturer Parts as required. Choose a cheaper component, or one that is available – the choice is yours, and the choice can be made while you are still designing and not after the design has left your hands!

Not happy with current part choices? - make changes as required on-the-fly as you design!