How FairSpec scores a component
Four weighted pillars, published rating tiers, and the limits of what the model can claim.
Three problems that cost weeks and kill margins.
FairSpec catches them at design time — not after the board spin.
Obsolescence surprises
An NRND part on your BOM today is a costly redesign tomorrow. FairSpec flags lifecycle risk across every component before architecture is locked.
Compliance failures
RoHS and REACH status moves with the declaration trail. FairSpec checks restricted-substance and SVHC signals at component level from distributor declarations.
Supply Shocks
Sourcing concentration is the disruption signal FairSpec actually scores — sole-source lines and shrinking authorised-distributor coverage — not a short-window availability-trend heuristic.
The promise in one line: If your team can open a spreadsheet, they can check a single part — or run a full BOM risk analysis.
The scoring model
Weighting adapts to the component category — a connector is not judged like a microcontroller, and where a dimension cannot be assessed its weight is redistributed across the others. Sustainability carries the greatest weight by default, because non-compliance is the only failure that removes a part from the market entirely.
Sustainability
Restricted-substance status and the quality of a manufacturer's environmental reporting, where those are declared. Embodied-carbon and conflict-minerals datasets are not inputs — this pillar scores only where evidence exists.
Repairability
How serviceable a component stays across its life. Reads service-documentation availability, spare-part supply depth, and field replaceability. Low repairability signals long-term support cost that never appears on a datasheet.
Reliability
Temperature range and grade, plus AEC-Q / MIL-STD qualification and safety certification where declared. Failure-rate data is rarely on datasheets, so this scores only where evidence exists — not field-failure feeds, vendor quality certs, or third-party lab results.
Total Cost of Ownership (TCO)
Unit price is only the visible cost. TCO scoring uses supply and lifecycle signals the engine still computes — not the retired SCR supply-duration, availability-window, or availability-trend inputs.
- Lifecycle phase (Active → NRND → EOL)
- EAU-corrected historical procurability
- Stock depth
- Authorised distributor count
What a FairSpec rating means
Ratings provide an indication of part quality, supply chain robustness and compliance
What the score does — and does not — claim
Plain-language limits of the published model.
Weights redistribute when a pillar cannot be assessed
When a pillar cannot be assessed its weight is redistributed across the others. That redistribution fires on roughly six parts in ten in a 1,273-part corpus, so fixed nominal weights would describe only a minority of parts.
The four pillars are not independent
The four pillars are not independent: eight data points feed more than one, and lifecycle status contributes to all four, so they are complementary views of related evidence rather than independent measurements.
Compliance statuses are relayed, not verified
Compliance statuses are relayed, not verified — normalised third-party data with no directive version, no exemption detail, no substance identification, and a retrieval date that is not a declaration date.