This is worrying really. Back when I used to work as an engineer consuming parts it wasn’t unusual for some parts to disappear entirely with no notice. This usually turned out to be some legacy piece of equipment that broke at the manufacturer for which there was no replacement. There was no replacement because the whole manufacturer had been limping along with 1980s equipment.

One of the parts was devastatingly expensive to substitute. It was a very low noise JFET which was being used as a high impedance amplifier buffer. We had to evaluate ten different parts from other manufacturers then hand select a suitable part with the right curve and noise figure parameters.

To get 10 usable parts meant we had to buy 10,000 parts in, buy $40k worth of kit (HP FTW) and spend a month doing it. The BOM cost went to $6000 a FET from $50. Fortunately being in defence sector they just burned the cash while we redesigned the entire front end of the device which took months of qualification and test.

Automating this test process actually started my software career.

Edit: also I’ve got to stab Six Sigma and other process methodologies in the face here. They pushed elimination of waste and metrics that drove that to the front of business success. This meant eventually relying entirely on just in time manufacturing and supply chains. Coming from a defence background this was a disaster from the old days of buying in stock for the entire lifetime of the devices in the field.