Often, having a maintenance contract misleads Application OEMs and Prime Contractors into a false sense of long-term protection. When Primes are not privy to an accurate assessment of a system’s life cycle, gaps between the end of a contract and the continuing need for parts creates production and sustainment vulnerability.

Reacting to these vulnerabilities adds up over time. Even a single obsolescence crisis can require as much elapsed time as the initial engineering work to qualify the board—but it doesn’t have to.

The time to plan for your product’s long life cycle is before you start encountering part EOL notices. Companies presume they will be able to renew their maintenance contracts under similar terms as before, but that’s rarely the case. Dwindling supply chains make finding what you need more difficult and time-consuming than the process you’re accustomed to. Support-contract gaps can lead to production stalls and unnecessary work to restart production. Alternatives must be considered in advance.

This is when implementing GDCA’s PLM+ (Proactive Lifecycle ) protocol benefits your organization’s ability to manage obsolescence as well as deal with customer demand for older or discontinued products. Once a contract ends, efforts to estimate the boards and parts needed for the system’s life span without going over often fail, leaving OEMs and Primes with an insufficient stock to support their systems. GDCA specializes in helping you manage your legacy system from beginning to end—and any time in-between.