Live Supplier Data - BOM Generation - English documentation - The Altium Wiki

Live Supplier Data - BOM Generation - English documentation - The Altium Wiki

Altium has live links to supplier data. I personally do not place a high value on that feature, here is why.

My Altium DBLib database table already has 32 parameters before adding any pricing data and inventory data. I really don't need the extra work or the bloated library.

I have better options, like letting someone else do the job at no cost for me. I simply upload my BOM to one of my favorites suppliers and quickly get a fully costed BOM with availability, price, and end of life-cycle issues addressed in a report.

I have a few years of experience as buyer and planner for board projects. Experience has taught me that the inventory I found yesterday may not be available tomorrow.  

More than once I have seen all available inventory vanish only a couple days after verifying availability. Maybe this is where the live link could be useful. But what happens two days later I release the project is anybody's guess.

Are you really worried about where you are going to find those 1K Ohm resistors or 1uF capacitors?  I think not.

Regarding costing, an 0402 cap in 10K quantity is going to cost ~ $0.05. And that 1K resistor is going to cost ~ $.005 in volume. The cost for these jelly bean parts can quickly be estimated in a spreadsheet.

My real concerns are for the higher cost and higher risk parts, like connectors, micro-processors, flash memory, etc... which typically only account for only a few items on the BOM. 

After a project is released from engineering to production the life-cycle and cost are normally tracked in a PLM and MRP system, not Altium.

Conclusion: I can not justify the time and effort required to add inventory pricing data to Altium libraries.