Critical Thoughts on Embedded Sustainment & Obsolescence
Critical Thoughts is where we share hard-won insights from the field. It’s not a blog—it’s a working record of what we’ve learned supporting sustainment, managing obsolescence, and partnering with OEMs on legacy challenges that don’t fit the usual models.
These are the strategic, technical, and sometimes messy realities behind keeping embedded systems mission-ready over the long haul.
The past few decades has seen exponential advancement in circuit board technologies and related industries. This unprecedented technological growth has devastated many older critical embedded applications and their manufacturers, with OEMs pushing for new technologies. In contrast, older technologies become harder to support. Pre-stocking has historically been used as the solution to the obsolescence problem,…
Like the image to the side, modern combat vehicle electronics can resemble a bowl of hardware spaghetti. Different “bolt-on” devices and adaptors are stitched together by multiple suppliers who may be using different standards and interfaces. With barely enough room for a soldier wearing body armor, integration and interoperability have become key concerns. Working with…
Defense Maintenance & Sustainment Summit (DMS 2012) February 27-29, 2012, | La Jolla, California It was my first time attending WBR’s Defense Maintenance & Sustainment Summit, and it was fascinating to hear about best practices from the many government attendees and their commercial partners. The focus was CBM (condition-based-maintenance), a sustainment approach that involves installing…
I must admit, I’m looking forward to the upcoming Embedded World 2012 presentation on Model Based Design and Testing of Embedded Systems for the Train & Transportation Industry by Franck Corbier, with Dassault Systèmes. Why? Because I have an old-fashioned side of me that loves nothing more than hours on a train, traveling across country.…
The conference that was bigger than I even imagined. As any business owner knows, you are always going to find new conferences, events, or trade shows you didn’t know about, and are really glad you discovered. Medical Design & Manufacturing West 2012 (affectionately known as MD&M West, or #MDMwest in twitter parlance) took place this…
Whether you’re checking out his illuminating talks on the nature of the universe, theoretical cosmology and quantum gravity; watching him play himself on Star Trek: The Next Generation, The Simpsons and Futurama; or geeking out to MC Frontalot’s rap, science, and quotations; chances are you’ve heard Stephen Hawking’s iconic voice. What most people don’t realize is that while…
Following its development in the late 1970s by Motorola, VME bus continues to see wide use across many different equipment industries today. In fact, the first COTS VME boards to enter the domestic market (c 1983) were the MVME101 CPU and MVME110 CPU, both of which are still supported by GDCA today (though no one’s asked in…
The resolution of obsolescence for mission-critical electronics systems is of utmost importance. Obsolescence issues affect almost every electronics system that is maintained long-term. Arlin describes specific issues and suggests solutions to sustain those systems, focusing on the option to remanufacture obsolete systems. Key considerations include startup and material costs, along with hardware design and program…
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