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Back in the old days we had qualified second sources for all parts that went into engineering. In fact it was part of the design specification not to rely on on
by iasay 4y ago
Back in the old days we had qualified second sources for all parts that went into engineering. In fact it was part of the design specification not to rely on one vendor. That put some limitations on what was possible as it pushed the technology back around ten years behind state of the art, but it did not in any way subtract from what we were delivering. Mostly because we actually could deliver it...
- linkdink 4y agoThat's because the US military required it. Electronics and component reliability was so terrible that they started naming and shaming by publishing reports about exactly how each part was total crap. It showed industry that everyone else was making garbage, and that the military would pay for quality. Add in the second source rule, and suddenly everyone is in the business of making better quality parts. Nowadays, there are additional market forces that drive higher quality. Technology also advanced beyond what you could do with discrete components and simple building block ICs. So the cost-benefit scales tipped towards allowing single source.