BRX Components

[RBPLC]

1) Have BRX component levels returned to pre-pandemic availability? If not, when do you think this will occur?
2) I know much re-work was done during the pandemic to support alternative components. Going forward, will these alternative components be used or will hardware revert back to originals? Or a mixture?
3) From this point, do you see any issues with major component obsolescence from any vendors?
 

[BobO]

1) Have BRX component levels returned to pre-pandemic availability? If not, when do you think this will occur?

Mostly, yes. Our FPGAs come off of allocation in July, but we have plenty from gray market purchases and we've gotten some additional parts directly from Intel even before allocation has ended.

2) I know much re-work was done during the pandemic to support alternative components. Going forward, will these alternative components be used or will hardware revert back to originals? Or a mixture?

We will use up what we have, and move back to original (and generally cheaper) parts as supply comes in. Some of the redesigns were actually improvements, so those will stay.

3) From this point, do you see any issues with major component obsolescence from any vendors?

That is just normal sustaining engineering so you deal with it, but no.

Our backlog is already greatly reduced and we expect to be fully caught up by next month. Not sure what ADC is showing for leads, but it's a matter of weeks for most things.

[Garyhlucas]

SO glad to hear this. My boss was getting worried and brought in other vendors to talk to. I?ve been down switching vendors road and it gets real expensive real fast. New software, different ways of doing things, redoing wiring diagrams, on and on.
BRX has totally done it for us. Every job we?ve had everything we need in the way of features. Canbus seems to be making inroads in the control valve market.  We are looking at building a product with a fair number of automated valves where direct Canbus support or with a POM module would be nice. However we can get RS-485 to Canbus converters.