TECH ARTICLE
“The impacts of obsolete components are mostly pricey for the user—especially when a redesign is necessary and costs are incurred for engineering services, operating capital or test equipment.”
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n today’s world, obsolescence is almost unpreventable because of rapid technological revolutions and evolutions, but also because of the changing market demand day-by-day.
The impacts of obsolete components are mostly pricey for the user—especially when a redesign is necessary and costs are incurred for engineering services, operating capital or test equipment.
Brownfield sites*, for example, are the direct result of the actions of the consumer sector— the products are non-durable because the end-user hungers for new, modern and making-life-easier commodities.
Often there are still some of the obsolete components available on the market but those are often sold by high-cost brokerage companies and product authenticity can´t always be confirmed.
Another cause of obsolescence is environmental policies and restrictions of special substances like RoHS, RoHS2 and REACH which confront producers with further costs.
This is compounded by globalization— resulting in counterfeits or fakes from all over the world being imported and unsuspectedly used in, for example, airplanes or pacemakers.
But how can we ensure that the industry sector´s needs will also be satisfied in the long run? The railway supply and aviation industries, for example, have a constant demand for the same, unchanged components over a period of 30 to 40 years! This means that Obsolescence Management should be a mechanism to deal with the correlation between durable systems and obsolete components.
What follows is that the costs of products containing the obsolete components will rise and often inefficiency appears. A missing or careless Obsolescence Management system doesn’t just affect direct costs, it can also impact the supplier’s or OEM’s business image, market share, and indirectly, lower turnover. As a result of the inability to continue fabricating products containing obsolete components, corporate clients are more likely to switch over to competitors with more innovative or cheaper alternatives.
* A brownfield site (or simply a brownfield) is land previously used for industrial purposes or some commercial uses. The land may be contaminated by low concentrations of hazardous waste or pollution, and has the potential to be reused once it is cleaned up.
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