Tania Scroggie is starting the new year with another installment of her short video series, Tania’s Teachables, on YouTube! Tania tackles the frustrating and recurring nightmare of embedded electronics obsolescence in her tenth video discussion.

The Nightmare of Obsolescence

Nearly every OEM has experienced it. Customers grow frustrated and leave because the OEM cannot support those older products or provide the needed services. Through conversations with OEM representatives, Tania has discovered that many company members don’t even realize they have any obsolescence issues–or just don’t want to acknowledge the problem. She has seen countless companies move forward with new products only to be held back repeatedly by the same thing: obsolescence. 

To break this painful cycle, Tania suggests that OEMs first develop a deeper understanding of legacy sustainment and its value. Legacy sustainment isn’t just dragging along an old product; the strategies and actions we take to support and extend the life of crucial older embedded electronics are still important to customers. This is especially crucial for industries like defense, aerospace, and industrial automation, where these older systems can’t easily be replaced or upgraded. 

A Problem Stemming of Lack of Understanding

Unfortunately, many companies lack a solid sustainment strategy for these types of legacy systems, and this lack often disrupts operations, increases costs, and hinders innovations for the company and its customers. Tania has seen this firsthand. A few years ago, she visited a company grappling with these exact obsolescence challenges, overwhelmed by their lack of a clear strategy. And this wasn’t the first or last time she had encountered this problem. Without a solid foundation and plan, obsolescence quickly becomes a persistent and costly cycle that is difficult to break. 

This particular problem has many sources. Companies can get too focused on their new and upcoming products, forgetting their old ones entirely, or they don’t realize that they require additional resources to meet a demand for obsolete products. Or the company doesn’t have a good plan to manage the demand and falls into the cycle of using half-measures and partial solutions to try and keep up. More often than not, companies don’t fully understand the cost of obsolescence until it’s far too late. 

A Solution in Proactive Thinking

But it doesn’t have to be this way. We can break the cycle of obsolescence just by implementing a solid plan–a written strategy that incorporates long-term planning for a product’s entire lifecycle, start to finish and beyond. With the right tools in place and the right people to support the strategy, like a legacy equipment manufacturer such as GDCA, that costly nightmare of electronics obsolescence can become a thing of the past. We must embrace a proactive mindset, anticipate challenges before they occur, create a more resilient supply chain and customer relationship, and support innovation across the board. Only then can we properly turn obsolescence from an expensive and time-consuming problem into an opportunity for new growth and innovation.