Peter Sanborn (Professor in the CALCE Electronic Products and Systems Center and the Director of the Maryland Technology Enterprise Institute at the University of Maryland) talks about the trend toward sustainment outcomes and the cultural reasons that have prevented our community from achieving them. This involves intentional collaboration between sustainment stakeholders in specific areas…and energizing students to become the next generation of lifecycle sustainment champions.

Sustainment Symposium 2020 hosted by GDCA is a special virtual symposium focused on the journey from obsolescence management to legacy sustainment. In this symposium, we pull together leading minds across the DoD supply chain highlighting their relevant sustainment experiences and exploring what could happen when we begin to focus on sustainment as the objective.

Dr. Sandborn’s group develops life-cycle cost models and business case support for long field life systems. This work includes: obsolescence forecasting algorithms, strategic design refresh planning, lifetime buy quantity optimization, and return on investment models for maintenance planning (including the application of PHM to systems). Dr. Sandborn is the developer of the MOCA refresh planning tool. MOCA has been used by private and government organizations worldwide to perform optimized refresh planning for systems subject to technology obsolescence. Dr. Sandborn also performs research in several other life-cycle cost modeling areas including total cost of ownership of electronic parts, transition from tin-lead to lead-free electronics, and general technology tradeoff analysis for electronic systems.