Component obsolescence is a slow-moving problem until it is not. A part that shipped without issue in the previous production run gets a product change notice from the manufacturer. The geometry changes. The footprint no longer matches the PCB land pattern. The electrical characteristics shift enough to affect a tight timing budget. By the time procurement flags it, the board is in layout and the production schedule has been fixed.
This is the scenario CADY's BOM validation rules are designed to surface early, specifically at the schematic review stage when changing a component still means a BOM edit rather than a PCB re-spin. Here is how the checks work and what they do and do not catch.
What a BOM validation check actually looks at
CADY receives a BOM as a CSV file, typically exported from your EDA tool alongside the netlist. The minimum useful fields are: reference designator, manufacturer part number (MPN), manufacturer name, and component value. With those four fields, the rule engine can run four categories of checks.
The first is format validation: are all reference designators populated, do they follow a consistent convention, are there duplicates in the MPN column that might indicate two components sharing a part number when they should not? This is the mechanical consistency check that catches data entry errors before they get to procurement.
The second is cross-reference consistency: does the component value specified in the BOM match the value in the netlist component attribute? If your capacitor at C12 has a BOM value of 100nF but the netlist shows 10uF from a previous design iteration, CADY flags the discrepancy. This happens more often than you would expect on designs that evolved from a previous generation by copying and modifying symbols.
The third is availability signal checking: CADY queries a component database against the MPN to identify parts that carry active end-of-life (EOL) status or product discontinuation notices. This is not a real-time distributor inventory query (we are not claiming to know what is on the shelf at any given distributor today), but it flags MPNs that appear in our EOL records, which are updated periodically from manufacturer lifecycle notices.
The fourth is footprint-to-pin-count consistency: does the component's package description in the BOM match the number of pins in the netlist component definition? A QFN-48 component listed in the BOM but present in the netlist as a QFN-40 footprint will cause an assembly problem regardless of whether the part is electrically correct.
End-of-life detection: what it can and cannot find
EOL detection is useful but bounded. Manufacturer lifecycle data is not always announced far in advance, and not all manufacturers publish machine-readable EOL notices. Our database covers major semiconductor manufacturers and tracks product change notices where publicly available. For categories like microcontrollers, power management ICs, and memory devices, coverage is reasonably good. For niche or specialty components from smaller manufacturers, we may not have timely lifecycle data.
When CADY flags an EOL MPN, the violation appears as a WARN in the report with the available lifecycle information: active EOL status, last known recommended order date if present in the notice, and a suggested replacement MPN if the manufacturer named one. The engineer can then verify the current status through the manufacturer's website or a distributor before deciding whether to change the part.
What we do not do: CADY does not guarantee that a part we flag as active is actually available in the quantities you need on the timeline you need it. Supply chain dynamics for specific parts, especially in markets that experienced significant disruptions in 2021-2023, can make a technically active part effectively unavailable for months. Availability checking requires a live distributor query against your required quantities and target dates, which is a separate data feed from schematic-level BOM validation.
Lifecycle categories and how to interpret them
Component lifecycle status typically follows a staged vocabulary: Active (normal production), NRND (Not Recommended for New Designs), EOL (End of Life, with a last ship date defined), and Discontinued (no longer manufactured). CADY maps these to violation severities as follows: Active components produce no lifecycle flag. NRND components produce an INFO violation (advisory, review at your discretion). EOL components produce a WARN (should be reviewed before production). Discontinued components produce a CRIT (the part is no longer obtainable through normal channels; replacement is required).
The NRND flag is worth paying attention to even though it is only INFO. An NRND designation from a major IC manufacturer typically means the part is entering a wind-down period of 12-36 months. For a product that will be in production for multiple years, designing in an NRND part today is choosing a future re-spin. For a one-off prototype or a short production run, it may be perfectly acceptable.
A common failure pattern: inherited BOMs
The most common source of obsolescence problems we see in submitted BOMs is inherited part selection. A team takes a reference design from three years ago, copies the component list, and builds a new board without auditing each part's current lifecycle status. The parts worked fine in the original design. Most still work fine. But one or two have moved to NRND or EOL in the intervening time, and nobody checked because the assumption was "this is a proven design."
Consider a scenario we see occasionally: a hardware team designs a new IoT gateway board, derives the power management section from a proven reference design that used a specific DC-DC controller IC. That IC's manufacturer issued an NRND notice 18 months ago and the replacement part has a different pinout. The inherited BOM carries the old MPN. A CADY BOM review at the schematic stage flags the NRND notice. The team switches to the current replacement before layout, avoiding a footprint change mid-design. The re-spin cost is zero.
Without the check, the same scenario ends with the board in production, the original IC on a 16-week lead time from distribution, and the team evaluating whether to spin a new board for the replacement or take the lead-time hit. That evaluation itself costs engineer time, and either choice costs money.
BOM validation in the review pipeline
The workflow for running BOM validation through CADY is straightforward: export your BOM from KiCad or Altium in CSV format alongside the netlist, upload both together when creating a review via the API or web UI. CADY runs BOM checks as part of the same review pass as the netlist checks. The violation report separates violations by category, so you can filter to BOM-only findings when you are doing a focused procurement review.
For teams running CADY in a CI pipeline, you can structure the pipeline to fail on CRIT BOM violations (discontinued components) but only warn on EOL and NRND. The exit code logic in the CADY API response allows this granularity: violation objects carry both category and severity, so your pipeline script can apply whatever policy makes sense for your team's release process.
One limitation worth naming: BOM validation at the schematic stage is not a substitute for a procurement review done closer to production. The CADY check is best run early, when design changes are cheap. A pre-production BOM audit done by your procurement team against actual current distributor inventory and lead times is a different kind of check that should also happen, later in the cycle. The two complement each other; the schematic-stage check does not replace the pre-production one.
Custom part lists and approved vendors
Some teams maintain an approved vendor list (AVL) or a preferred parts library for cost, qualification, or supply chain reasons. CADY supports importing a custom parts list that defines your approved MPNs. When a custom parts list is active, the BOM rule engine checks submitted BOMs against your approved list and flags components that are not on it as INFO violations. This lets you catch cases where an engineer used an un-approved substitute MPN without blocking on every deviation (INFO severity means it surfaces for review without becoming a merge blocker).
Custom parts list management is available on the Team tier, where you can maintain the list via the API or the web interface and apply it consistently across all reviews run by your team's account. For individual engineers on the Pro tier, the standard EOL and lifecycle checks described above run on every review without any additional configuration.