Ordering just a few LEDs from an electronic supplier is difficult. Most of them have minimum order requirements and the shipping is usually more than the actual part itself!
We have this problem constantly so we decided to do monthly ‘batch orders’ from Farnell and Rapid Electronics, two of the biggest suppliers.
We are still planning on how to do this but here is our algorithm, copied verbatim from our internal wiki:
- Member fills in a form with required parts, quantities
- Form is handed to a committee member who acks the order and collects payment
- Orders to be done last working day of the month
- If item is out of stock/discontinued
- if (user agrees to a replacement) { Order replacement part }
- else if (user agrees to postpone order) { roll over order to the next month. }
- else { refund the person their money for that part }
- If minimum order is not met on a single supplier, we can try to find it on another supplier, else apply the same procedure as out of stock.
So, if you’d like to participate in this scheme let us know!
