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Managing Obsolescence Risk

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Through-life Engineering Services

Part of the book series: Decision Engineering ((DECENGIN))

Abstract

Many systems that must be manufactured and supported for long time periods lack control over critical portions of their supply chains; these systems include: military, avionics, industrial controls, and rail infrastructure. During the long lifetimes of these systems the components, technologies and resources that the systems depend on become obsolete (and potentially unavailable) before the system’s demand for them is exhausted. The life-cycle (or through-life) cost associated with managing obsolescence can be prohibitive if the problem is ignored. This chapter describes the obsolescence problem, methods of forecasting obsolescence and management solutions applied to hardware, software, and human skills.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    “Sudden” or “inventory” obsolescence, which is prevalent in the engineering management literature, is the opposite of DMSMS-type obsolescence. Inventory obsolescence describes product design or system specification changes that cause existing inventories of parts to no longer be needed, e.g., [2].

  2. 2.

    For example, sourcing from the aftermarket creates the risk of obtaining counterfeit parts, e.g., [3].

  3. 3.

    The dynamic nature of an industry is referred to as “clockspeed,” [8]. DMSMS-type obsolescence problems are usually encountered by slow clockspeed industries.

  4. 4.

    One common type of substitute part is a commercial temperature range part that has been “uprated” to meet the extended temperature range requirements of an obsolete Mil-Spec part, [20].

  5. 5.

    A last time or bridge buy means buying a sufficient number of parts to last until the part can be designed out of the system at a design refresh. Last time buys become lifetime buys when there are no more planned refreshes of the system.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20144, USA

    Peter Sandborn

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  1. Peter Sandborn
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Correspondence to Peter Sandborn .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacture in Through-life Engineering Services, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom

    Louis Redding

  2. EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacture in Through-life Engineering Services, Cranfield University, Cranfield, Bedfordshire, United Kingdom

    Rajkumar Roy

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Sandborn, P. (2015). Managing Obsolescence Risk. In: Redding, L., Roy, R. (eds) Through-life Engineering Services. Decision Engineering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12111-6_20

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-12111-6_20

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-12110-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-12111-6

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