You're Sleeping on the Magic of APIs for Electronic Procurement

Supply chain optimization has become a key point of concern in the tech industry. According to a Forbes innovation article, this started when “the Covid-19 pandemic exposed significant deficiencies in supply chain logistics, with essentially no corner of consumerism spared. Among them, the global semiconductor chip shortage — which lasted over three years and caused significant follow-on economic, safety, and other impacts — has prompted regulatory, innovation, and technological responses to increase the resiliency and security of this small but mighty component critical to digital transformation.”

In other words, high-efficiency, just-in-time production works great while the status quo is stable. However, tech companies learned that this decades-long manufacturing best practice has a significant Achilles’ heel: supply chain disruption. When supplies no longer show up just in time, the entire system screeches to a halt.

DigiKey, an electronics component distributor, is no stranger to the importance of optimizing the supply chain for chips, semiconductors, and all parts digital. It offers over 15.9 million products from over 3,000 suppliers and processes over 6.5 million orders in a year. And now — to help simplify the supply chain — DigiKey offers application programming interface (API) tools that can share its product, pricing, and inventory data with its pool of nearly one million customers. Those that sleep on these API tools risk their supply chains suffering from another chip shortage.

What are API tools?

APIs are communication protocols that enable multiple software tools to securely share data with one another. In this way, it is similar to electronic data interchange (EDI) but with some notable differences.

First, EDI requires all communicating tools have strict format adherence. Second, API is used to share all kinds of data, while EDI focuses on traditional business information. And finally, APIs can be programmed to instruct disparate systems to work together, in real time, on a specific task. It should be noted that using API does not prevent a tool from using EDI. In fact, DigiKey explains that by using both API and EDI, companies can create a “closed-loop, machine-to-machine connection” with the benefits of both protocols.

As for DigiKey’s API tools, these enable external tools to communicate and perform the following tasks using DigiKey data:

• Search for product information
• Attain real-time pricing
• Produce quotes (to lock in pricing for 30 days)
• Assess a product’s real-time inventory
• Assess product change notifications
• Place orders
• View past orders
• View order status
• Update or change orders
• Manage supply chains
• Integrate with DigiKey’s myLists
• Identify a product or order using a barcode or tracing ID

Why electronics designers and manufacturers need DigiKey’s API tools

To understand what these API tools can mean to the tech industry, consider a company designing and manufacturing a next-generation cellphone. Its engineers could use DigiKey’s APIs to connect and interact with their design and product lifecycle management (PLM) tools.

For example, as soon as the PLM system sees that a new electronic computer-aided design (ECAD) model is approved, it could automatically order the DigiKey products needed to manufacture the phone. Similarly, if the same company’s inventory system detects that it is running low on a particular chip, it could order a reshipment. Both of these automated processes prevent supplies from running out while reducing errors, saving time, and cutting costs — all by taking humans out of the loop.

How much money can be saved by implementing these API tools? As a benchmark, DigiKey estimates that a company could save $55,600 a year if:

• The employee performing these procurement tasks has an hourly rate of $55
• The company produces 200 quotes a year
• There is an average of 80 lines per quote
• There is an average of 2,000 orders per year
• There is an average of 4 lines per order

These API tools are also beneficial from a supply chain disruption perspective. Since DigiKey’s API enables its customers to assess the real-time inventory of a product, an automated failsafe could be programmed to order a part’s remaining supply if DigiKey’s inventory is low. This failsafe could trigger automatically and help protect the company from future chip shortages.

How to get started with DigiKey API tools

So, how can a company implement DigiKey’s API tools into their own systems? Here is a summary of the multistep integration:

• Step 1: Research the DigiKey API tools available to create a feature list.
• Step 2: Register for a My DigiKey account and login to create a developer account.
• Step 3: Open a sandbox application where code can be developed and evaluated.
• Step 4: Use DigiKey and internal systems documentation to help produce code that governs how the two will interact.
• Step 5: Evaluate the code within the sandbox application until the expected results are returned.
• Step 6: When the code is verified and validated, switch from the sandbox application to the production version.

For more information on how to get started with DigiKey’s API tools, read its developers page.