“One of the problems design engineers face today is designing in parts that are, or soon will soon become, obsolete,” said Manny Marcano, president and CEO of EMA. “To avoid that, engineers need to wade through a sea of part change notifications from the various manufacturers and vendors, looking for end-of-life notifications for parts in their design. Manual processes for this can be very time consuming and error prone. These services that we now offer allow our customers to quickly find the key information they need so that they can avoid these and other types of supply chain problems that result in costly redesigns during the manufacturing phase.”
 
The company said a key factor in managing your supply chain is understanding whether or not there are change notices from the manufacturers of your components. PCNAlert is said to rank the manufacturers based on the manufacturer’s notification process. With this ranking, design engineers and procurement groups can assess the risk of using parts from a particular manufacturer. According to EMA, most proactive suppliers provide PCNAlert part change notifications as soon as they are issued. For those that do not, PCNAlert checks the manufacturers’ websites daily looking for posted notices, while at the same time building relationships with these manufacturers.
 
Included in the PCNAlert products and services are:
AVLalert - Component Event Monitoring
AVLalert monitors Approved Vendor Lists (AVLs)/Approved Manufacturer Lists (AMLs) for PCNs and End of Life (EOL) notices from PCNalert’s daily updated PCN and EOL database. Summary information is sent via email on a daily basis enabling users to drill into the details of their parts affected, as well as the ability to view and review the manufacturer's original documentation before making downstream decisions.
 
BOMverifier – Automatic On Demand BOM and Parts List Scrubbing
BOMverifier brings together all of the critical component information that impacts the user's parts list or BOM in one easy to use application. PCNs, EOL notices, cleansed part numbers, cleansed supplier names, datasheets, lifecycle data, RoHS compliance documents, suggested cross references and component environmental information are said to be automatically returned in minutes.