Contested deletion
editThis page is not unambiguously promotional, because at this point in our history there are three critical issues that the electronics industry is facing. They are:
- Shortages of manufactured components, still a result of semiconductor manufacturing plant shutdowns in Japan after the 2011 earthquake.
- Electronic parts counterfeiting
- Shortages of raw materials
DistiStock is attempting to address the first two - shortages and counterfeiting. Most electronics parts buyers use web based search engines. These engines use databases of available parts which are downloaded from distributors. There are several problems with that approach.
- The first is that the industry is very dynamic. Stock levels fluctuate dramatically by the hour. Cached results just don't provide an accurate picture, so often contract manufacturers of electronic equipment think there are parts available when reality there aren't. To make a long story short, what relevance is it that ACME Company had a thousand of something in stock yesterday if you need it today?
- The unfortunate result of the previous dilemma is that companies that make finished electronic products end up turning to brokers who do not always get their parts from reliable sources. It may be the same part number and look the same on visual inspection, but in circuits they fail. This isn't a trivial problem. Very large companies have fallen prey to this. Why? Because they couldn't find the part from a reputable source. Sometimes the parts are outright counterfeit, sometimes they're just crap that didn't meet quality control at the semiconductor plant and wasn't disposed of properly. Either way, they don't work.
- Sometimes if a legitimate part isn't available locally, it's still available in some other country from a different distributor. The web based search engines don't span the globe. They usually just pass on results from about 20 distributors, almost all of whom are in the U.S. Authorized parts that are indeed available don't show up as such because the local guys are sold out.
DistiStock addresses these problems by accessing the distributors directly to ensure the information is up to the minute, and by accessing manufacturer-authorized distributors in 22 countries. For the people designing circuits like cell phones, tablets, microwave ovens, anywhere there's a chip used, they can't afford the degradation that's taking place in the industry. The article is trying to provide an alternative to the way things are done.
I question if anyone actually bothered to read the article. I thought that the points I need to reiterate here would have been self-evident. Guess I'm wrong. Either way, please do not delete this. There are a lot of highly skilled designers and engineers who need to know that there's an automated way of doing something in under a minute that normally takes them hours.
Thank you Gunter Richter 16:57, 17 August 2012 (UTC)