Tania Scroggie is back this week with another installment of her YouTube short video series, Tania’s Teachables, exploring the skeleton in the corporate closet–embedded electronics obsolescence. 

The Obsolescence Skeleton

Recently, Tania and other members of her team attended the first ever Embedded World North America conference, a wonderful and insightful event. Although the attendees were excited to talk about the future of embedded electronics, such as new products and innovations, no one wanted to talk about the looming issue of obsolescence, or even address its existence. Tania and her team even proposed a presentation on obsolescence and proactive strategies to manage it, but the organizers of the trade show weren’t interested. They found it difficult to engage other attendees in discussions about the topic, at times nearly impossible, which was a little disquieting.

Día de los Muertos in the Corporate World–without the Acknowledgement of Death

Tania found the event a little like the holiday, Dia de los Muertos, a Latin American holiday that celebrates the dearly departed, and a holiday that faces death head-on, celebrating it as a part of the life cycle. However, the corporate world tends to take an ‘out of mind, out of sight’ approach to obsolescence, celebrating life without acknowledging the inevitability of obsolescence. 

For many in the embedded industry, electronics obsolescence is just an afterthought, a problem for another day. Many companies even claim that they’ve never had any customers come to them for support for any of their products, and that everyone is happily moving on from one upgrade to the next, no questions asked. Tania was once even threatened with the police for daring to even mention the need for a long-term support plan for products. No one wants to even hear the word, let alone have an engaging, transparent discussion about it.

Confronting the Thing that Shall Not Be Named

Electronics obsolescence has become the Voldemort of the corporate world–no one dares to utter its name, and no one wants to hear it either. However, ignoring obsolescence won’t make it go away, just like the characters in the Harry Potter books couldn’t get rid of Voldemort just by ignoring his existence. Sweeping the issue of obsolescence under the rug only causes more problems to fester, such as loss of crucial technical documentation, decreased internal communication, and even damaged customer relationships. 

This is why legacy equipment manufacturers (LEMs), like GDCA, are so important. LEMs specialize in addressing obsolescence head-on, allowing companies to continue supporting their customers without disruption, and helping them to prepare for obsolescence well in advance. Together, we’ve helped many companies develop processes for legacy sustainment of critical products, especially for customers with specialized needs, like the Department of Defense, who can’t just upgrade to the latest and greatest with a snap of their fingers. Our goal is to help safeguard our partners’ products and maintain their customer relationships for the long term. 

However, in order to be more effective across the world of embedded electronics, we have to work together and break the silence on obsolescence. We need to make it a part of the conversation, plan for it, and consider obsolescence as a natural part of the product life cycle. Then, it will become far less of a looming threat for the wider embedded industry.