Parts Procurement

If you allow Thomas Instrumentation to handle the parts procurement for your product, then you can take advantage of our commonly stocked parts. This means your product will cost less because you benefit from our large volume orders of those parts. With our experience in engineering, PCB layout, and contract manufacturing, we can provide the following procurement services:

We research a customer’s parts to find the best part package and the cheapest price from the most reliable distributors. During this phase, we often find better parts which increase the product’s reliability.

We look for substitute parts for the following three reasons: replace obsolete parts, increase a part’s availability, and decrease part cost. Many times we can greatly reduce the overall production cost of a product by simply researching substitute parts.

Thomas Instrumentation keeps many standard parts in its inventory stock. These parts are purchased in higher volumes because they’re on multiple customer products. Keeping this stock saves everyone on both lead time and price. If a new customer’s product uses any of those same standard parts, then they get that same benefit of significantly lower cost and shorter lead time.

Many times we are able to obtain obsolete parts to help keep a product alive longer. If the obsolete part can no longer be found, we can also help customer’s find a substitute part.

We offer customer’s the choice to stock parts in advance of potential orders. This enables us to provide customers with rush orders of their products.

All parts are stored in one of our two inventory rooms which are both temperature and humidity controlled environments. The inventory of Thru-Hole parts is counted by hand at regular intervals and parts are automatically deducted every time a batch of boards is created. The inventory of SMT parts is tracked through MyCenter with barcodes and automatic deductions by the SMT machines. With the following two programs, we can accurately track all inventory and plan manufacturing schedules:

• MyCenter
  This is a software tool suite created by MYCRONIC, a manufacturer of our SMT Pick & Place machines. This tool allows users to either manually enter new parts or scan supplier barcodes into an SMT part database. It then creates barcode labels that the MYCRONIC equipment uses to track parts and setup the machines. The SMT Pick & Place machines then deduct part quantities from that same database once a manufacturing run is complete. This allows us to keep an accurate count.
• Fusion Inventory
  This tool was created by Thomas Instrumentation’s software developers to better manage our entire inventory. One critical feature is it creates a Thru-Hole database where quantities of Thru-Hole parts, mounting hardware, and cables can be stored. Another important feature is that it combines our the Thru-Hole database, the MyCenter SMT database, and our Assemblies database into one program. With all that data in one place, we can run reports to tell us how much stock we have of any part, pull up the stock for any given assembly, or run part shortages on many assemblies. The shortages feature is key because it allows us to develop a manufacturing schedule and know what parts we need to purchase in order to complete that schedule.

As you can see, using Thomas Instrumentation for parts procurement provides you with seamless operation from initial purchase order to delivery of product. We would prefer to do all the parts purchasing for every product; however, we do not insist upon it. We are willing to work with any customer even if they choose to purchase their own parts for a contract manufacturing job. Our inventory system is flexible enough to accurately track and maintain a separate space for your company’s parts.