FireBoard Successfully Navigating Today’s Supply Chain

Just to recap, two years ago, in the second quarter of 2020, lockdown had consumers not only upgrading computers for the home office, but also buying consumer electronics for all of the other rooms in the house.  All this purchasing put a demand on the base components required to make all of these connected devices.

A year ago, FireBoard posted on the supply chain issues facing them since the lockdown, when lead times on component delivery jumped from 12 to 50 weeks. 

Now in 2022, the supply chain challenges before FireBoard have not let up.”One very critical component in particular went up to a 96 week lead time…which is almost impossible to cope with.” says FireBoard’s Purchasing Manager Hannah Warren.  A year ago Warren would forecast her procurements six months out, today she is projecting orders over 12 months in advance.  

Despite massive lead time increases on components, FireBoard has maintained production and delivered products to market with minimal disruptions.  Warren credits this to FireBoard’s “safety stock” and reordering components early to keep ahead of demand.   

When a component becomes no longer available, FireBoard’s electrical engineers search for an alternative with matching footprints and specifications, for Hannah to source.  When an alternate cannot be located, FireBoard kicks problem solving up a notch.  

suppliers of the LCDs for the FireBoard 2 changed their display driver ICs in the middle of production.

In early 2022, FireBoard received a Parts Change Notification or PCN from one of their component suppliers.  Bad news: the LCD screen used in the FireBoard 2 would be changing to a different display driver chip. “This one had a totally different pinout” says Tyler an Electrical Engineer and Partner at FireBoard Labs. “Initially I was going to design a completely different board.”

One PCB with two different footprints to accommodate both versions of driver chips, one shown in red the other yellow.

Further analysis yielded some good news: by offsetting the footprint, he was able to design a PCB that could accommodate either the existing or the new display driver.  Better news: there was enough lead time on the LCD chip change that the new board could be designed and tested before the chip change took effect.  

The Spark’s PCB showing the two versions of the same microcontroller, one square on the left, the other rectangular shaped footprint on the right.

When the Spark thermometer was at the prototyping phase, it was unclear which “package” (aka footprint) of a certain microcontroller FireBoard would be able to purchase due to limited availability from manufacturers. So instead of gambling on one particular version, once again Tyler designed a versatile PCB footprint that would be able to accept either footprint.  This gave Hannah two different microcontrollers to shop for, increasing her likelihood for success. Further, only one PCB (not two different ones) would need to be produced and kept in stock. This prevented the release date of their new instant read thermometer from being pushed back. Once again FireBoard was able to use one board for multiple parts.  

The past two years have more than proved that no one can be sure of what the future will bring.  Given the dedication and creativity on tap at FireBoard Labs, they will be ready for the next batch of challenges.