Global insight into the ongoing supply chain crisis

HANK ALEXANDER NICK CARIPIS

MIKE RANPURA ROBERT ZOHN

SUPPLY CHAIN ROUNDTABLE

How have the global supply chain issues directly impacted the smart home industry and your business specifically?

Hank Alexander, Director – HTSN, Nationwide Marketing Group: The supply chain challenges, specifically chipset shortages, have and will continue to impact the product roadmap likely for the next few years. It goes beyond the delays in getting product and the rolling impact on dealers’ on-hand inventory. We’ve seen added pressure on warehouses and extended lifecycles for products that typically roll out after a year. For HTSN specifically, it’s forced us to go out and forge new partnerships across the distribution network so our members can have access to the products they need, when they need it.

Robert Zohn, President and Founder, Value Electronics: Shortages of consumer electronic equipment have caused delays in completing many AV, home network, and smart home projects. We’re purchasing more than we need so we have inventory in anticipation for future jobs. In addition, prices have also been moderately increasing. Demand has greatly increased as families continue to spend more time at home. Their interest in home entertainment improvement has grown exponentially, creating more difficulties, and causing setbacks for consumers who want to upgrade their smart devices.

Mike Ranpura, Director, Smart Life Audio Visual: The supply chain crisis has massively impacted the way we do business, and our day-to-day running. In the early days, we had to make the decision to purchase and hold fast-moving lines of stock in inventory to ensure we had our usual lines of products to sell. As item lead times have gotten worse, we’ve started holding more inventory than ever before.

Nick Caripis, Founder, BNC Technology: The global supply chain shortage has definitely impacted our business, but not as much as most. Longer lead times and stock discontinuation play a role in not completing a project on time.

What do you expect to return to the way it was before, and what do you think has changed irrevocably?

Hank Alexander: I think we’ll eventually see the industry get back to more of a traditional product and pricing roadmap. Right now, especially in the panel business, things are very much out of whack. By this time next year, I expect prices will normalize and the traditional promotional periods (like Black Friday) will come back into play as key tentpole events for the industry.

On the flip side, we’re living in a new era of client or customer engagement. The past two years have seen consumers truly discover how to self-educate, and they’re coming to us knowing exactly what they want. The challenge becomes how to get your business in front of them during that self-education process. Custom integrators finally understand, or are willing to learn, how a website can market their business and connect them with the design and build communities.

Robert Zohn: I expect we’ll see availability of equipment improve, but prices will likely continue their moderate, but steady increase as supply chain manufacturers face higher production and transportation costs.

Has the semiconductor chip shortage affected your business? In what ways?

Hank Alexander: The chipset shortage will likely be the biggest influence on this industry out of the pandemic. We’ve seen the first-hand effects of manufacturers having to rewrite their product roadmaps and delay new introductions because they couldn’t get their hands on chipsets or because they had to rewrite firmware for the chips they could get. Our industry probably lost about 18 months to two years’ worth of innovation. Some brands are just now starting to catch up on those promised new products.

Robert Zohn: Shortages in SoC are the most relevant reason for all electronic equipment shortages. I’m very happy to see MediaTek open research and SoC manufacturing to the U.S. this year.

When do you see improvements to the current situation?

Hank Alexander: The supply chain is slowly but surely starting to self-correct. We’re probably looking at early 2023 before we can start talking about getting back to “normal.” With regards to the chipset challenges, the runway is likely a little bit longer. We’ve heard of a few manufacturers securing land to build chip-making plants here in the U.S. The earliest they’ll be up and running is maybe 2024. Thankfully, the U.S. government recently passed legislation (the Chips and Science Act), so it seems some relief is on the way.

Robert Zohn: Supply of most consumer electronics has just started to moderately ease up, which gives us the opportunity to stock up, so we have inventory on hand for new jobs as they come in. Prices are still on a slow but steady incline, and newly launched products are delayed and limited in availability.

Most CE manufacturers have made progress in production and transportation to get the finished product supply and distribution channels better stocked and prepared for the strong market demand.

How has your business addressed these issues with your clients to manage their expectations?

Mike Ranpura: We’re very up front from the first conversation with new clients. We provide an estimated date but stress it’s still an estimate. Prior to the crisis, we would order equipment a few weeks before we needed it to ensure clients could benefit from the full warranty period. Now, we order equipment the moment the specification has been agreed and the contract has been signed. Clients have been surprisingly understanding, as delays haven’t just affected our industry.

Nick Caripis: The way around this is to design systems with stock availability in mind or alternatively, let customers know of the long lead times and try push the project forward from a procurement perspective. We are very project-based and do a lot of long-term to mediumterm projects, so our customers are prepared to wait for the correct quality or technically correct product.

What advice would you have for other integrators to help maintain positive relationships with clients at this time?

Mike Ranpura: Be extremely clear and set client expectations as soon as possible. Reiterate all the cool functionality they will be gaining once the system is up and running. Keep them informed of updates from your suppliers so they aren’t in the dark about what’s happening.

Nick Caripis: Communicate and see if there’s an opportunity to share stock and work together to make all of our customers happy. Other than that, we encourage our customers to wait for the product we’ve recommended. We don’t believe in rushing to install an inferior product just because it’s the only thing available.

smartlifeav.com

bnctechnology.co.za

brownhensolutions.com

“We’ve seen the first-hand effects of manufacturers having to rewrite their product roadmaps and delay new introductions because they “ couldn’t get their hands on chipsets or because they had to rewrite firmware for the chips they could get. Our industry probably lost about 18 months to two years’ worth of innovation. - HANK ALEXANDER

ARTISTIC INTENT AND THE ROLE OF THE INTEGRATOR

BY IAN BRYANT | TECHNICAL CONSULTANT

What does artistic or creative intent mean, especially in the technology integration industry? Films and music are engineered by highly educated professionals. These engineers, artists, producers, cinematographers, directors, and other crew members have intentions for their work no matter the format.

On a recent CEDIA podcast, Peter Aylett, Partner at Officina Acustica poses the question about what our job is as an industry. His answer is definitely food for thought:

“Our job as the CEDIA community is to take content and reproduce it as well as we possibly can. When we say well, what we mean as close as possible to the intent of the content creator, artists, and group of people who have a vision of what we’re going to consume.”

Objective or Subjective?

Art, including the visual and performing arts, are both objective and subjective. This is very old and passionate argument that changes perspectives even between art forms.

The world-famous Eden Gallery defines subjective art as “art that is created by the artist themself. The art is made based on personal feelings and emotions felt when creating it.” Having the emotional draw, subjective art is unique to each person’s expressions of themselves and has been around for quite some time.

On the other hand, objective art is “created to be seen and interpreted by an individual. It can express certain feelings or thoughts that are not easily said or shown in words.” A couple of common examples include canvas paintings and sculptures.

Film takes the debate to a new level through character point of view. When a filmmaker chooses to show a specific perspective, that point of view becomes subjective to the character because the character wants the audience to see something specific. On the other hand, there’s an inherent objective experience in music and performing arts because of the fact that it’s being produced. Each production requires a highly strategic consideration of how an audience will experience the art.

Creators often have both subjective and objective intentions in their creations, but the interpretation of art is a subjective experience. Even though you might have a similar feeling or experience as the person next to you, your perspective and viewpoint will always make it a unique experience.

Geoff Meads, owner of Presto Web Designs and longtime CEDIA volunteer, explains that “the recording environment, be it video/audio/music, is not an objective thing. It’s very much subjective. Some of the best and most well-regarded instruments and microphones are far from perfect, and they create a piece of art that’s really there to generate an emotion. If you feel the kind of feeling that was obviously intended, that’s the best we can probably do.”

Technology & Education

As technology integrators, our role is to provide a system that can reproduce content at all levels of production value in the best way possible.

“We don’t know what the director’s intent was, but we have a very good understanding of the technical requirements of the room it was mixed in. RP22 is going to help us deliver those recommended practices in our industry,” says Bespoke Cinemas Owner Adam Pelz.

Specifying objective technical criteria that defines the level of experience in terms of artistic intent is central to the recommended practices CEDIA is developing related to private entertainment space design. Poppy Crum, former Chief Scientist at Dolby Labs, explains that “standards ensure consistency of experience.”

The integrator channel is maturing into a trade that provides experiences to the consumer through technology and art which truly separates us from the other trades. We should take responsibility to provide the best possible experiences for our customers.

Objective criteria and the accompanying recommendations on how to achieve them allow installers to ensure the promised client experience is delivered in an objective and measurable way. When we all embrace a common engineering-based language to describe performance, we move forward as an industry and become true professionals.

One of the most important reasons to learn and move away from being “glorified retailers of expensive boxes,” is so that “we can be more objective about what is it we’re trying to achieve,” Aylett notes. When we approach projects as an engineer, we take a logical and objective approach rather than “throwing expensive kits at it and hoping for the best.”

Even though there’s heavy discussion on the RP22 standard, video is also a strong focus. RP23 will be the next CEDIA/CTA standard to be released. In the meantime, there are many classes to take on the video side. I spoke with Joel Silver, President and Founder of the Imaging Science Foundation who was wrapping up a class with a group of post-production video engineers. He was teaching the same class to these students as he teaches to integrators, the only difference is the displays he uses. These engineers were taking his class to preserve the artists’ intent of the product they work on.

Client Discovery

Over the years, the CEDIA channel has started to understand the importance and necessity of proper and thorough client discovery. Well thought out client discovery conversations can help develop an understanding of how important art is for your customer. It also gives you an opportunity to educate and inform your client on possibilities they may not know about.

Paradise Theater President Sam Cavitt says, “I think we always have to keep our ears open. We have to make it personal to the client. There’s no trickery to this - it’s all about communication and seeing what the opportunities are to create something extraordinary for them.” When we work with clients, we’re on a journey, not in a race to get the job done.

The integrator channel is maturing into a trade that provides experiences to the consumer through technology and art which truly separates us from the other trades. We should take responsibility to provide the best possible experiences to our customers. In doing so, we’ll preserve the artists’ intent that our technology systems reproduce through film, music, and art.

Stay tuned to CEDIA for the release of the CEDIA/CTA-RP22 standard and to learn even more register for the RP22 workshop at CEDIA Expo 2022.

[IAN BRYANT]