Industrial Electronics BOM Management sometimes causes headaches.
The product had not changed.
The BOM had not changed.
The production process had not changed.
Yet for companies managing industrial electronics products over a long production lifecycle, BOM management does not always end with keeping the original component list unchanged.
One component on a snowmobile winch motor driver board started becoming more expensive almost every week.
At the beginning of 2026, the component was still a normal production item. There was no end-of-life notice, no obvious shortage, and no immediate reason for the customer to consider changing it.
Then the price started moving.
What initially looked like a procurement issue eventually became an engineering and product-lifecycle decision.
This is a recent example of how changes outside an electronics product can affect the economics of an established industrial product — and how an EMS partner can provide useful information before a procurement issue becomes an urgent engineering problem.
The product was a snowmobile winch motor driver board that we were already manufacturing.
The board used a TI power-management IC that had been stable in both supply and production.
In March 2026, our distributor informed us that the market price of the device had started moving sharply.
The original price was around $0.80 per piece.
Then something unusual happened.
For more than four consecutive weeks, the price increased by roughly 30–40% every week.
At first, the situation did not look like a conventional shortage.
TI’s website initially showed inventory of more than 20,000 pieces. Later, that figure dropped to more than 10,000 and remained around that level.
On paper, there still appeared to be plenty of stock.
But another signal caught our attention.
After placing an actual order and making payment, the procurement process did not simply follow the normal “stock available, waiting for shipment” process. TI sales became involved in the order.
The inventory number was telling one story.
The actual procurement process was telling another.
For us, that was enough to keep watching the situation.
We did not immediately recommend changing the component. We first looked at what the price movement could mean for the customer’s existing product.
The customer’s expected production quantity was around 3,000 units.
At $0.80 per IC, the component represented approximately:
$0.80 × 3,000 = $2,400
Eventually, the market price reached approximately $1.80.
At that level:
$1.80 × 3,000 = $5,400
The difference was about $3,000 for one production order.
A $1 increase in one IC may not sound significant when looking at a single piece.
Across 3,000 finished products, it becomes a different question.
There was another number that made the comparison more interesting.
The customer estimated that repeating the relevant CE certification work would cost around $2,000.
That meant the potential additional component cost had reached a level where evaluating another solution could make economic sense.
But that did not automatically mean that replacing the component was the better choice.
A component change can introduce its own costs and risks:
The question was therefore not:
“Should we replace the IC?”
It was:
“Has the price movement become significant enough to justify evaluating an alternative?”
That distinction mattered.
We were not dealing with a component that had already become unavailable.
We were looking at a component that was still available, but whose economics were changing quickly enough to deserve attention.
The TI component was one example of a broader change we have been seeing across the electronics supply chain in 2026.
The pressure on semiconductor supply is increasingly connected with the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure.
AI data centers require large quantities of high-performance computing components and memory. Semiconductor manufacturers are responding to this demand with additional investment and capacity adjustments across different product segments.
Reuters reported in August 2026 that SMIC’s second-quarter profit more than tripled, driven by strong demand for AI-related semiconductors. The company said it was optimizing existing capacity and accelerating new production lines to address industry-wide supply shortages. Reuters — AI-driven semiconductor demand
The important point for an industrial electronics manufacturer is not that every IC is being affected by AI.
It is that semiconductor supply is increasingly influenced by where manufacturers are allocating capacity and where demand is growing fastest.
That can change the supply conditions for products that have nothing to do with AI.
At the same time, the continued expansion of EVs, energy infrastructure and other electrification projects is adding demand across several parts of the electrical and electronics supply chain.
The pressure is also moving further upstream.
PCB manufacturing depends on materials such as copper foil, resin and glass fiber. Energy, transportation and geopolitical conditions can also affect the cost and availability of these materials.
In April 2026, Reuters reported that the conflict in the Middle East was disrupting the global PCB supply chain and affecting materials including epoxy resin, glass fiber and copper foil. The report also described significant increases in PCB prices during the period. Reuters — PCB supply chain and raw material costs
From our purchasing team’s perspective, the most noticeable feature this year has been that the price movement is not limited to one category.
By May and again in July, we saw broader price adjustments across the supply chain.
ICs were moving.
But so were resistors and capacitors.
Solder paste, connectors and PCB materials also saw adjustments depending on the specific supplier and material.
Some of these increases were small enough that an industrial OEM might not notice them individually.
A few cents on a resistor or capacitor rarely changes a purchasing decision.
But when multiple small increases accumulate across a complete BOM, the effect becomes more visible.
For some orders, the combined increase across these smaller items can already amount to roughly $0.50–$2 per finished unit, depending on the product.
The customer may not see a dramatic change in any single line of the BOM.
The manufacturing cost can still move.
This is one reason BOM management becomes more relevant for products with long production lifecycles.
A mature industrial product may use the same BOM for years.
That stability is valuable.
But the economic environment around that BOM can change considerably during the same period.
The component itself may remain technically suitable.
The PCB design may remain unchanged.
The production process may remain unchanged.
Yet the cost of producing the same product can still move because the inputs have changed.
For a high-volume product, a relatively small change in one component can eventually become significant.
But the decision is not simply about the component price.
It is about comparing the additional cost of the existing component with the engineering, qualification and certification costs associated with changing it.
That is where procurement and engineering considerations begin to overlap.
Once the potential cost impact became clear, we brought the situation to the customer’s attention.
We did not change the BOM.
We did not purchase a different component.
We did not assume that a lower-cost device would automatically be better for the product.
We explained the price movement and asked whether the customer wanted us to evaluate alternatives.
The customer agreed.
At that point, we looked at more than one direction.
One option we recommended was another device from the same TI product family, but with a different package.
The objective was not simply to find a cheaper component.
We wanted to identify a technically reasonable alternative that could potentially reduce the impact on the existing product while still requiring the appropriate validation.
Because we had been manufacturing this motor driver board, we were familiar with its existing production and PCB implementation. That gave us enough manufacturing context to identify another direction worth evaluating.
The customer also identified a potential alternative from 3PEAK.
We supported the sample evaluation and produced boards for functional testing.
The 3PEAK sample passed our functional testing.
But that did not make it the new production component.
The customer wanted to put the product into an actual snowmobile environment and operate it for approximately one year before reaching a final conclusion.
For a product operating in a real vehicle environment, that additional validation is an important part of the decision.
A component can pass functional testing on the production floor and still require considerably more field validation before becoming the production choice.
And this is where the story ends differently from a typical cost-reduction case study.
There was no dramatic cost saving.
In fact, there was no immediate cost saving at all.
The original TI component remained in the mass-production BOM at the higher price.
The customer ultimately decided that continuing with the original component was the better choice for the current production stage.
From a marketing perspective, that may sound like an unsatisfying ending.
From a manufacturing perspective, it is simply the actual result of the project.
The purpose of identifying an alternative was not to guarantee that the alternative would be used.
The purpose was to make sure the customer knew that an option existed before the original component became an urgent problem.
The customer could then weigh:
The final decision remained with the product owner.
For industrial electronics, BOM management is not simply about keeping the BOM unchanged.
It is also about understanding what is happening around it.
A component can remain technically suitable while becoming:
That does not mean the component should automatically be replaced.
It means the change may deserve the customer’s attention.
The same principle applies to other manufacturing inputs.
A PCB supplier may face higher copper or resin costs.
A connector supplier may adjust pricing.
A passive component manufacturer may change its commercial terms.
None of these events necessarily require an engineering change.
But when several of them happen at the same time, the economics of an established product can gradually change even though the product itself has not.
In this case, Fumax did not change the customer’s component.
We did not replace the TI device without authorization.
We did not present the alternative as a guaranteed cost-saving solution.
We simply brought a changing market condition to the customer’s attention early enough to allow an evaluation.
We supported the evaluation, provided the manufacturing feedback and continued with the customer’s decision.
That is ultimately what this case was about: not replacing a component for the sake of replacement, but making sure the customer had enough information and enough time to make the decision.
For industrial products with long lifecycles, that distinction matters.
An EMS should not change a customer’s component without approval. But it also should not wait until a component becomes unavailable before telling the customer that something has changed.
Sometimes manufacturing support means finding a replacement.
Sometimes it means validating one and deciding not to use it.
And sometimes the most useful thing an EMS can provide is simply an early warning — while there is still enough time for the product owner to decide what comes next.
