Podcast: 3 Ways to Build Long-Lasting Products –
Sync Engineering & Procurement

• Podcast: “What’s your colleague’s reasoning? Engineering and Procurement need to sync!” 
• Guest: Wilmer Companioni, Technical Marketing Manager, Zuken USA 

This month, we presented a podcast with Wilmer Companioni, Technical Marketing Manager for Zuken USA. He explains how using accurate data and full visibility of your supply chain, facilitating discussion and creative design solutions between engineering and procurement, and building redundancies in electrical engineering design, can build a stronger and longer-lasting electronics product. 

Quality of data matters. Be sure to source data from reputable sources. Especially when facing supply chain crunches, this data is useful when exploring creative options to build a product, such as using Tantalum Capacitors over Multilayer Ceramic Capacitors (MLCC’s).

How to Create a Long-lasting Product: 

1. Collect Accurate Data – Empower your engineers with accurate, informative data. Inundating them with data is unwanted, however, providing actionable data with sound reasoning based on trends in pricing, inventory, and global events will create a strong rapport between procurement and engineering teams. 

2. Be Creative with Design Solutions and be Open to Change – Example: A recent shortage in MLCC’s used in the design of power supplies forced engineers to consider tantalum polymer capacitors as an alternative. While the cost of a specific capacitor may be more expensive, considering the overall design enhancements to the product may result in a cheaper to produce and longer-lasting product. 

3. Build Redundancies in Your Design – What was previously thought to be inefficient and expensive, building redundancies has become a common practice to add both flexibility and reliability to a product. In a recent poll conducted during a Zuken webinar, more than 66% of designers said they were building redundancies into their products.