With the rapid decrease of component lifecycles (we have seen the frequency of EOL notices from the component supply base increase linearly for many years, and accelerate dramatically over the last few years), many OEMs have been caught off-guard with this problem.
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
which is the base for the Precience product mentioned above, and
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
