Harwin recently released results from its 2025 Connecting with North America report, highlighting the trends, selection criteria, and importance of digital tools of connector specifiers and buyers in the United States. A key finding of the connector survey shows that reliability is a primary consideration for selecting connectors, along with performance and operating life.
Launched at the 2025 EDS Leadership Summit in Las Vegas, the survey covers some of the most important applications for connectors, the technologies, and the criteria that engineers and purchasers use to make product and supplier choices. It also looked at the importance of online tools in the design and selection process and how specifiers obtain information for making informed design and buying decisions.
(Source: Adobe AI Generated)
The Connecting with North America report surveyed over 300 professionals in a variety of roles, including engineering, procurement, and management, across a range of high-reliability industries including industrial, automotive, aerospace, and telecommunications. The results provide a look into how engineers and buyers based in the U.S. select and buy connectors.
As one of the first connector surveys conducted by Harwin, the results provide valuable insights. “We want to show our customers and distribution partners that we want to act on the feedback, learn from it, improve, and meet the demands of the market,” said Peter Schneid, Harwin’s vice president of marketing.
For Harwin, the survey reinforces the importance of product reliability. The survey provides insight that validates Harwin’s approach with high-reliability products for demanding applications while helping to further evolve product and service offerings, Schneid said.
The U.S. connector market is expected to reach $14 billion by 2034, according to Global Market Insights Inc. The market research firm attributes the expected growth to an increase in robotics automation, smart factories, and IoT devices.
A key finding shows the importance of reliability when selecting a connector. Over 60% of respondents expect reliability from five years to beyond 10 years. Based on a score out of five, reliability (4.55) and performance (4.55) topped the list of criteria, followed by operating life (4.36), delivery times (4.14), and withstanding high temperature/harsh environments (4.14).
The most important criteria when selecting a vendor (based on a score out of five) include the availability of complementary products (3.84), rapid sampling (3.81), and cable assembly design (3.77).
Value-added services for cable assemblies is a growing trend. Connector designs are becoming more complex, and therefore the connectivity with the cables becomes more complex when there are mixed layout designs with power and signal, as well as manual processes such as crimping, which slows down the process, Schneid said. “If a business like Harwin can provide preassembled wires or crimped wires on the full cable assembly, that is a value-add.”
Other findings underline the importance of online tools and how artificial intelligence is starting to be used for selection, design, qualification, and testing.
They are using a mixture of tools, from Copilot or agents that are specific to a closed network to open-source, freely available tools such as ChatGPT to ask questions, but the number is still relatively low, Schneid said. “I think a lot of it is used for researching and using Copilot-like tools.”
Everybody should look at AI in a way of pooling their information and allowing people internally within the business to query that data much quicker, Schneid said. “Harwin is no different from any other business where you have individuals who have an incredible wealth of knowledge, but if that person is on holiday, maybe an answer is delayed.”
If you can extract some of this information, put it into a central pool, and then make it available to other people as well as an AI agent, this can benefit everyone, he added. “It does not make people redundant; it just enhances the experience of every customer who has a question and also makes the life of every employee within the business much easier because you have a trusted resource.”
Over half of the respondents said that they currently use or plan to use online design tools as part of the selection and design-in process, and nearly 18% of respondents said they are using AI in their design and optimization process.
They are using AI tools in a variety of areas, including selecting connectors, PCB design, qualification, and automating test and quality control. They also said AI was useful for predictive maintenance during manufacture and overall supply chain optimization.
The survey also reveals the growing use of 3D printing. According to 30% of respondents, they use 3D printing for a range of applications, such as prototyping, ensuring mechanical fit, rapid sampling, small batch manufacturing, tooling design, and material evaluation and selection.
For connector makers like Harwin, 3D printing gives them more flexibility in providing custom samples to buyers before moving to more traditional manufacturing processes for full-scale production, according to Schneid.
“3D printing opens up the opportunity to submit a custom design,” he added.
Schneid said if a customer were to submit a drawing for a new connector design, it would take months and a “huge business case to justify the investment in tooling and designing it properly, whereas with 3D printing, you could have a demo or a sample in a couple of days or a week.”
While respondents said technology is more advanced so they can use more automated processes, which makes some of their work easier, applications are also much more sophisticated and complex, Schneid said. Everything becomes smaller, faster, and more robust and must be done in new ways, especially for applications such as space systems and autonomous vehicles, he added.
While diverse new technologies such as AI and 3D printing are aiding in the selection and procurement of connectors, specifiers still face key challenges. While 27% of respondents expect their roles to become easier, about 54% believe their jobs will become more challenging.
For example, engineers said they face a range of challenges from long lead times, minimum order quantities, supply chain disruptions, and obsolete parts to balancing cost with performance and reliability, ensuring connector reliability in harsh environments, achieving miniaturization within tight PCB layouts, and maintaining signal integrity in demanding applications.
The key takeaways are that supply chain issues and cost pressures are ongoing challenges; there is growing complexity in reliability and high-speed designs; and there is a clear demand for better technical support because engineers feel that more is asked of them within their roles, Schneid explained.
Other findings revealed the need for better supplier support, comprehensive technical documentation, and robust online tools, including access to 3D models. When asked “How do you source information?,” suppliers/distributors ranked No. 1. The survey also identified DigiKey, Mouser, and Arrow as the top three distributors for buying connectors.
Other top sources of information include sales/product teams, online component libraries, industry-specific online communities, and online/printed media outlets. Click here for the complete report.
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