How PCB Manufacturer BayaTronics Uses Octopart

Octopart is best known as an electronic components search engine, providing inventory and pricing across a huge range of authorized and non-authorized distributors. Companies that need to find primary, secondary, or emergency sources can use Octopart to find distributors for their components. Engineers also use Octopart to find components for their new designs.

As a contract manufacturer working in a variety of industries, BayaTronics primarily uses Octopart as a sourcing tool for customer builds. Companies that need quick turn and turnkey production services trust BayaTronics to handle procurement for their orders, and BayaTronics leverages the search and filtering features in Octopart to get the job done.

To gain maximum benefit from the search and procurement features in Octopart, BayaTronics uses a standard workflow to optimize costs, eliminate out-of-stock parts, and streamline procurement for customer builds. Combined with a 3rd party purchasing system and direct purchasing capabilities from global electronics distributors, BayaTronics can pass on cost savings to their customers and stay cost-competitive.

The Procurement Process at BayaTronics

BayaTronics prides itself on providing supply chain solutions for client projects. BayaTronics customers build hardware for a variety of markets, and their customers’ assemblies can contain 100’s of unique parts. Bayatronics then provides procurement and PCB assembly services for these customers, and the procurement process for these orders demands the ability to see across the electronics supply chain.

Octopart's biggest selling point is that it is easy to use; anyone can get onto Octopart and figure out how to use the platform. We also have our new hires start using Octopart to complete their tasks.

Jeni Hanslia, Materials Manager & Quotation Specialist, Bayatronics

Among the features found in Octopart, BayaTronics leverages the BOM tool and real-time display of pricing and inventory data to create parts orders for customer production runs.

The BOM tool in Octopart allows users to upload their bill of materials in a standard Excel format and instantly access inventory and pricing data across distributors for each line in the BOM. Users can group pricing data by preferred distributor and quickly identify out-of-stock parts, obsolete parts, end-of-life parts, and invalid part numbers. For some parts in the BOM, users can instantly create a purchase order with a distributor at the click of a button.

BayaTronics has streamlined their process by leveraging this tool and Octopart’s dataset as follows:

1. Upload the customer BOM to the Octopart platform
2. Select preferred distributors that offer most competitive pricing
3. Identify out-of-stock, obsolete, or EOL parts
4. Identify alternative parts using Octopart’s search features
5. Generate purchase orders from select distributors
6. Download a cleaned BOM for use in a 3rd party platform

This process eliminates manual entry of part numbers into a distributor website and enables cost reduction for the entire BOM. In a cost-competitive industry such as electronics manufacturing, each cost and lead time reduction obtained from component swaps improves outcomes for customers and helps win new business.

Octopart Is Critical For Turnkey Production

Thanks to Octopart’s close relationship with the largest global electronics distributors, Octopart  users can immediately create purchase orders directly from the BOM tool. This gives companies like BayaTronics the capability to clean a BOM, create a cost-optimized BOM, and instantly complete purchases directly from distributors. Cleaned BOMs can also be downloaded and used in 3rd party supply chain management platforms, an MRP/ERP system, or a PLM system.

At the core of this capability is off the parts huge distributor information database that provides visibility across the electronics supply chain. By using the BOM tool, as well as the real-time pricing and inventory data from Octopart, BayaTronics can ensure optimal pricing for customer builds across their preferred group of distributors. The company can quickly see and eliminate out-of-stock parts from a BOM, as well as eliminate obsolete or EOL parts. These features help a company like BayaTronics be more cost competitive and create maximum value for their customers.

I really like the BOM tool, where you can upload the whole BOM and compare prices for multiple distributors based on their inventory... This is really helpful for saving time as you can upload a whole BOM instead of searching for each part... I also like how Octopart gives users substitute or similar alternative parts. In case something is not in stock, we can look at a similar parts option.

Jeni Hanslia, Materials Manager & Quotation Specialist, Bayatronics

To see how Octopart can help your company optimize procurement and production processes for your builds, create your free Octopart account today. You can access the same tools BayaTronics uses to implement their procurement process and streamline purchasing.