Proactive BOM Analysis: Turning Supply Chain Risk Into Competitive Advantage

What if the part you approved in five minutes ends up costing your company ten million dollars down the line? What you’ll learn… (00:12) Why the Bill of Materials is quietly one of the biggest risk factors in electronics engineering (02:23) Eric Rimkeit's path from semiconductor procurement to HP commodity management to SupplyFrame (03:15) Ryan Chan's 20 years in supply chain strategy — and how SupplyFrame joined Siemens (04:24) A day in the life of an engineer buried under vintage charts, build checkpoints, and redesign requests (09:06) The real cost curve of a bad part: $1,000 to swap it on paper vs. $10 million once it's in the field (16:24) Why engineering and procurement don't talk — and who ends up "picking up the tab" (20:29) The unauthorized-parts-swap story from an overseas contract manufacturer (22:46) The lead-fishing-weight-and-ivy stunt Eric used to shake a team out of denial (29:43) Real results: 14,000 engineering hours saved a month, and $14 million recovered on tail-end parts (38:20) The three AI shifts reshaping BOM analysis: AI fabric, AI as a design partner, and agentic automation (43:40) The crawl-walk-run approach to actually getting a resiliency program off the ground More about the episode… In this episode of the Printed Circuit Podcast, host Steph Chavez sits down with Eric Rimkeit, Director of Marketing at SupplyFrame, and Ryan Chan, Vice President of Solutions Consulting at SupplyFrame — a Siemens company focused on Bill of Materials risk. Eric spent his career in procurement, from a semiconductor fab through commodity management at HP; Ryan spent two decades guiding companies through supply chain strategy before joining SupplyFrame. The conversation traces what happens when a design gets released without accounting for what's coming downstream: part proliferation, geopolitical disruption, tariffs, and shifting compliance standards that can turn a thousand-dollar swap into a ten-million-dollar redesign. Eric and Ryan unpack why engineering and procurement talk past each other, and share real stories — from an unauthorized parts swap caught on a factory floor to a homemade stunt involving a lead fishing weight and fake ivy — that show what's at stake when teams don't share visibility into risk. They close on where AI is headed next: not replacing engineers, but becoming a design partner that folds supply chain context directly into part selection. Connect with Steph Chavez: LinkedIn Website Connect with Eric Rimkeit: LinkedIn Supplyframe Website Connect with Ryan Chan: LinkedIn