Top tips to plan for and minimize the costs of component obsolescence: 1. Obsolescence management begins at the design phase Poor component selection in development can lead to premature product redesign and requalification, particularly for customers with long development and qualification cycles. Choosing the right component technology and supplier can have a dramatic impact on long-term availability. The lowest cost source may not be best choice for long-term supply. It is imperative to ask a supplier what their commitments are to support long-term availability. 2. Understanding the total cost of obsolescence • Does the project plan need to include anticipated product redesigns during its life? • How will the capital locked up in long-term component storage, be accounted for? • What will the component obsolescence impact be on the after-sales service commitments? 3. Planning for obsolescence and managing resources If your equipment has a long qualification, production, or in-service life you WILL face component obsolescence. Best-in-class organizations devote skilled multi-disciplined resources to the task of obsolescence management. Preventative planning by Purchasing, Component Engineering, Design, and Program Management can reduce or eliminate the cost and risk. 4. Proactively monitoring component lifecycles Regular component monitoring allows a user to anticipate problems before they occur. There are excellent component monitoring databases available from Z2Data, I.H.S. and Silicon Expert, which track a component’s life cycle, lead-time, and specification changes during its life. Such tools provide a lifecycle prediction, and component alerts when changes occur. 5. Ensure that you are aware of which PDNs affect your business. These component management databases can provide a PDN notification service. Users are shown all PDN data, or can load BOM structures into the database to receive matched PDNs specifically affecting them. 6. Last Time Buy (LTB) – What to forecast? Forecasting is not an exact science, and unfortunately most forecasts will be wrong. Underestimate your needs and you risk prematurely discontinuing a product and losing sales. Overestimate your needs and you will tie-up unnecessary capital in stock, while paying excessive storage costs. Should you plan a redesign in the future to limit your LTB? The design and requalification costs, plus the opportunity costs of using precious engineering resources looking backwards rather than forwards, need to be considered. 7. Purchase from Authorized Sources There is a common misconception that once the original manufacturer stops producing a component, unauthorized, or “grey market” sources are the only recourse. Nothing could be further from the truth. The risk-free option of an authorized after-market supplier, such as Rochester Electronics, should always be the first choice. Rochester Electronics is 100% authorized by over 70 leading semiconductor manufacturers. Our factory direct offering negates the need for expensive testing, and we are AS6496 compliant. As a licensed semiconductor manufacturer, we offer on-going build-to-order (BTO) devices using information and technology transferred directly to us from the OCM. All of the resulting product is 100% certified, authorized, licensed, and guaranteed. Rochester manufactured product is sold with the Original Component Manufacturer’s (OCM) full approval under the original manufacturer’s part number. For over 40 years, Rochester Electronics has been a TRUSTED AUTHORIZED semiconductor solutions provider. We are the Semiconductor Lifecycle Solution. Visit Rochester Electronics to learn more about our lifecycle solutions.