Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
(OP)
Today electronic circuits have a life-cycle of 36..72 months. But several electronic product segments like automotive or automation need availability of the circuits for 10 or even 20 years (for extensions and repair).
At my company we seek an early warning system to monitor our whole range of components to avoid bad surprises and to launch redesigns early. Information like component status and years left until end.of-life acc. EIA724 would fit our need, but most of our suppliers do not provide this info. Commercial obsolescence tools only cover a percentage of our active circuits, and passive components like capacitors, coils, and electromechanical parts like connectors are not covered by any tool we have seen.
I am looking for colleagues working in this topic to establish an exchange of info. If you know any solution to this problem please let me know.
At my company we seek an early warning system to monitor our whole range of components to avoid bad surprises and to launch redesigns early. Information like component status and years left until end.of-life acc. EIA724 would fit our need, but most of our suppliers do not provide this info. Commercial obsolescence tools only cover a percentage of our active circuits, and passive components like capacitors, coils, and electromechanical parts like connectors are not covered by any tool we have seen.
I am looking for colleagues working in this topic to establish an exchange of info. If you know any solution to this problem please let me know.





RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
So we decided not to buy that service but to continue the approach we followed in the past. Listen careful to the news forwarded through the supply chain. Since we only manufacture in small volume we usually buy parts to stock them if a part is going to become obsolete.
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
unfortunately in the real world of electronics a MCU alone is quite useless. Of course we use a lot of PLDs in our systems but we also need ADC, Dac, optos, OP-amps,etc.
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
There are a couple services that provide obsolescence and product change notice information, if you’re unable to get them from your suppliers or contract manufacturers directly. The ones I’m aware of are www.totalpartsplus.com, which is the base for the Precience product mentioned above, and www.pcnalert.com. The former also claim to have an obsolescence prediction algorithm. I have no experience with it and can’t vouch for it’s accuracy but would recommend a healthy dose of skepticism for many component types. Neither provide the breadth needed for most systems, missing many passives, interconnect, and smaller semiconductor suppliers. But if they can get you 80% of the way there, you only have to deal directly with the remaining 20% of your supply base. While it is absolutely critical that you receive, analyze, and determine appropriate action on each and every one of them for every component you receive one on, depending on these alone is reactive and invariably results in fire-fights and interdepartmental resource hassles to resolve the problems caused by them in the astonishingly short 90 days most give you.
The basic problem is that in order to design a product that has a lifecycle greater than the lifecycle of the components used to design it, you need to understand both and plan accordingly prior to undertaking the design. Understanding component lifecycles takes time and effort. But understanding that some will go obsolete, and what’s most likely to and what they’ll be replaced by is important. So a key to implementing an “early warning system” is to understand the technology and product roadmaps of the parts you use and design products so replacing parts does not required a complete redesign and code rewrite. The recommendation above by repoman to use a common processor core is sensible but isn’t close to the whole answer, as electricuwe points out. Get periodic (quarterly/annual) roadmap presentations from your key suppliers; talk to their marketing and sales people about how they determine when and why to obsolete parts. Also talk to their competitors and understand the space. This is a key strategic activity for your component engineering group.
You need to plan for, and budget for, sustaining engineering to review market and supply base changes on a periodic basis and determine what, if any, incremental design and part changes are required. This also gives you the periodic opportunity to cut in cost reductions and bug fixes.
Yes, single and sole sourcing tends to entail greater risk than multiple sourcing but more often than not these days many important parts will be single or sole sourced. Having a good, strong risk assessment and mitigation program in place when high risk parts (and suppliers) are being identified and selected for a new product is important to plan potential courses of action to take should the part become unavailable (“made of unobtainium”, as a former manager of mine likes to say), or to reject the proposed part entirely. And that’s where a good supplier selection and qualification process comes in to play. You shouldn’t have to worry (too much, anyway) about getting in a bind if you select the right suppliers, are a good, strategic customer to them (few small companies realize that they can in fact be a strategic customer – it’s not just volume based), and negotiate a mutually acceptable contract. One think I keep seeing over and over are companies that view sourcing as a technical problem and try to resolve it only by a technical approach; also taking a business approach can minimize technical problems and help speed their resolution when they occur.
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Mike Kirschner
Design Chain Associates, LLC
http://www.designchainassociates.com
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
Passives no longer can be considered "stable" either. The 1206 ceramic cap hasn't been the "sweet spot" for a decade; 0805s are being displaced by 0603s so there's plenty of movement in the passive space (especially capacitors). There's lots of new passive technology and form factors available now - they have to make a profit now too and can't be depended on to keep the old stuff around forever.
I agree completely with your assertion about CPUs; this is one of the most dangerous areas. Coding in a high level language helps with porting, but it's not always efficient.
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Mike Kirschner
Design Chain Associates, LLC
http://www.designchainassociates.com
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
My advice as Chuckles says is to stay with simple devices with industry standard pin-outs wherever possible. At least that way you have a chance of engineering in something else.
The parts suppliers simply look at from the supply and demand aspect and profit. They will suddenly stop supplying components as soon as the demand falls below the profitability threshold.
So the tip is to use whatever parts are high volume parts, and add to that volume. Things like 555 timers in 8 pin dip packages, are really obsolete dinosaur parts, but the demand is still there, so they are still readily available.
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits
By the way, 74 series TTL and 74AC series CMOS have a few different characteristics. Not only is the VIH/VIL different (try 74ACT for better compatibility there) but in higher speed boards you might find signal integrity - related problems due to edge-rate differences and decoupling problems related to dynamic power consumption differences. Propogation delays are also different; I've seen plenty of poor async designs that depend on prop delays alone to achieve a certain timing. On the other hand the swap out is relatively simple if the design is low speed or static. There are also plenty of other, more recent, logic families available besides AC/ACT and HC/HCT that might have better properties for replacement of existing parts in current and future designs.
Staying "agile" has lots of different meanings and implications. Could you explain a bit more about your view of an "agile" design and how it's achieved by using 35 year old technology?
Staying "away from sole source parts" is a noble goal but near impossible these days if you have to build a competitive and differentiated product. Understanding and evaluating your risks during product design and component selection, working closely with the supplier, and planning mitigation strategies is part of how your competition is dealing with the problem. My dissertation above is really proposing that OEMs take a business approach that encompasses and comprehends technical issues instead of just treating it as a technical issue and address it by trying to avoid it.
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Mike Kirschner
Design Chain Associates, LLC
http://www.designchainassociates.com
RE: Monitoring obsolescence of electronic circuits