GDCA Solution Director Thomas Helmonds is the guest speaker in our most recent YouTube upload! In this short, educational video, Thomas explores the role of legacy equipment manufacturing in long product lifecycles, supply chain resilience, and cost-effective solutions for the critical and obsolete embedded electronics systems. 

For industries like medical equipment manufacturing, defense equipment, and Aerospace manufacturing, many end-users and manufacturers require certain embedded electronic systems, systems that are critical for the safety and functionality of the product as a whole, for multiple decades. However, OEMs just can’t feasibly manufacture and supply these products, as well as offer repairs and maintenance, forever. In order to continue profiting, they have to eventually move on, focus on new product development, new technologies, and new innovation. Demand for the old products lessens to the point where even if they did try to support it, they’d barely break even, if they made money at all. 

But for some products, especially critical ones, the demand is still there, even if it’s just a few customers. Those customers often can’t upgrade to the latest and greatest for one reason or another, or they can’t upgrade easily without significant impact on their day-to-day operations. People who work in industries that tend to have long product life cycles like medical equipment, defense, aerospace, and industrial equipment manufacturing, often have large systems built around circuit cards that control their entire systems. Changing just one aspect will likely result in a full technology refresh that they can’t afford. 

And that’s where LEMs come in. 

Legacy equipment manufacturers (LEMs) are very different from OEMs. Rather than staying at the cutting edge of technology, always trying to get ahead of the curve, LEMs manufacture and support old, discontinued electronics. They don’t make any products themselves–they partner with OEMs to get the information and resources necessary to support discontinued products that are still required for a few crucial applications. LEMs manufacture an electronic part that is form, fit, and functionally the same as the original part, offering a much more cost effective and faster solution than trying to achieve a full tech refresh. 

To learn more about the role of LEMs in supply chain resilience, go check out Thomas’s video over on our YouTube channel!