Eurocircuits Responds to the World-wide Electronic Components Shortage

In late 2017 we launched our inhouse Assembly service for PCB Prototypes and small series since then it has grown substantially each year and has become a major part of our business.

But there is a World-wide problem!

What is the Problem?

Since the beginning of 2020 there has been a growing shortage of electronic components for PCBs and this is set to continue throughout 2021 and maybe even beyond.

Many valuable raw materials are in low supply or completely unavailable and the pandemic has significantly reduced market manufacturing capacity for electronic components. The longer the supply chain is, the more susceptible it is to disruptions.

In addition, due to the unclear procedures concerning goods from the UK it has increased the workload and thus delays in the departments of couriers such as FEDEX, UPS and others resulting in an increase in delivery delays.

How can Eurocircuits Help?

Since we do not control the supply chain for components, we have developed a solution called “Parts Reservation”.

This added a new function to your Eurocircuits user account allowing you to reserve the parts in advance for your upcoming order, thus ensuring the parts are available when you order.

This solution is currently fully funded by Eurocircuits and is our way to help to overcome these current issues.

For a more detailed explanation on how to use this new feature, please see our Parts Reservation User guide.

How can You Help?

We see all our customers as partners and as such we believe the best way to help each other is to be dynamic in our thinking.

So, to avoid delays in your orders there are few things that you as a designer can do to help.

The obvious way is to use our “Parts Reservation” feature and order your parts in advance.

Another way is to use our generic parts (functionality and package are specified but the manufacturer is not defined) as much as possible and eC-stock-parts (parts we keep on stock in our warehouses) as alternatives for the ones in your BOM list.

You are also able to follow the status of your order in the tab “View running orders” in your online customer account. When you click on status, you are shown an overview of all the actions we have done to prepare your order.

Using this you can easily see if the order is being held up by unavailable parts and then for example if these are non-crucial parts then you can request/change your order so that these parts do not need placing.

This will then release the order into production avoiding delays.

To find out how to do this please read our FAQ.

We are always available to answer your question and to help in any way possible. Everyone is in the same boat, and we are all simply riding out this storm together.