Industry partnerships are essential in reducing risk and providing counterintelligence data for the Defense Department. GDCA CEO Ethan Plotkin, Crowell and Moring’s Harvey Rishikof, Jim Kelly who leads the JVKellyGroup discussed their advice for industry colleagues and addressed the growing issue of supply chain risk for Bloomberg Government.
Have you ever requested additional post-EOL LTBs from your board OEM, only to find you need more boards later on?
Board OEMs care about their customers. If these OEMs could continue to provide the quality products their customers have come to depend on, most would. For the majority of customers, upgrades are a welcome and viable option; however for some, upgrades are not possible.
Board OEMs do what they can. Most offer some kind of lifecycle assurance plan that can extend support for 5-10 years after EOL of the board. Unfortunately, funding and forecasting for unusually long and sometimes indefinite program lifecycles leave these plans out of reach for many customers.
Obsolescence can pose a grave threat to individuals, economies, and nations. Security and defense receive a great deal of attention in our Critical Thoughts section, partly because they are domains in which obsolescence is highly visible and easily conceived. In fact, the defense industry has its own acronym, that specifically outlines the necessary steps to avoid problems caused by counterfeit and obsolescence.
The medical industry can be a loaded topic for a variety of reasons and, unsurprisingly, obsolescence within the health tech field can be equally touchy. Obsolescence in medical technology forces us to take a critical look at some of the equipment we use every day to help millions of people around the globe—equipment we’d much rather assume was cutting edge and in tip-top shape. Like defense systems, the embedded electronic systems in the health field save lives, keep people healthy and able to work, and ultimately contribute to the stability of loved ones and nations around the world.
Those who have been keeping up know the threat counterfeiting poses to the embedded world. To this point, most of our conversations regarding counterfeits have been focused on the damage they can do to projects, the costs incurred to replace them, and the threat they pose to the security of the supply chain. However, there is still the basic, personal way they continue to threaten us—the real and direct danger to us and our families as we go about the day-to-day business of driving from place to place. Counterfeit tires are on the road, and they are less safe and of lower quality than the products they pretend to be.
As the curtain begins to close on 2014, we at GDCA wanted to take a moment to say thank you to all of our customers, partners, and allies in the field.
It isn’t a high-profile battle, but those who know are aware that our armed forces are engaged in a perpetual war with an enemy that is, ultimately, unbeatable. That enemy is obsolescence. However, just because obsolescence is inevitable, it doesn’t mean there aren’t victories. Or one singular “VICTORY,” as the case may be.
Imagine waking up in the middle of the night with chest pains. You can’t call 911 because you live in a region without telephone service. There are few emergency services available and, even so, there are few functional roads. The pains pass, but you know you need to have it looked at. You begin the long, possibly dangerous trek from your remote home to one of the surrounding urban areas. You will try to locate a medical center, where you will receive modern medical care and access to high-tech diagnostics and treatments that aren’t available in your area.
Saline isn’t one of the products that most people tend to think about in terms of supply and demand. It has become almost universal in the medical world—especially if you stop to consider how often you see it adorning the background of hospital scenes in film and TV. In addition to being thought of as […]
The extent of component counterfeiting can be staggering when you think about it:
If non-authentic components have made their way into your production line, then each such situation represents a unique set of potentially life-threatening risks and vulnerabilities even beyond cost and schedule slippage. Today, thanks to the developers at Corelis, Inc., the good guys have a new anti-counterfeiting weapon in their arsenal: the JTAG Interrogator.
Earlier this spring, scientists at the US Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) announced a prototype process for producing liquid hydrocarbon fuel from seawater. NRL’s proprietary process uses a modular reaction system to remove CO2 from seawater (with 92% efficiency) while producing hydrogen gas. Once separated, the nickel-supported catalyst conversion system combines them again into liquid hydrocarbon […]
