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.
PLM+ is GDCA’s targeted approach to legacy sustainment, developed over decades by working closely with board and application OEMs. The process offers a new organizational structure to legacy sustainment, a time-tested way of being prepared. Traditional PLM (product lifecycle management) doesn’t address the intricacies of indefinitely sustaining legacy equipment after EOL. Traditional PLM leaves out…
With technology advancing at lightning speed and embedded boards being EOL’d sometimes even while a system is still in the design phase, new methods and ways of thinking must be introduced to meet the needs of programs and applications with long lifecycles. When embedded boards become obsolete, a Legacy Manufacturer can step in and provide…
I’ve recently come back from an exciting two-week road trip, and I’ve been talking to a lot of people about the impact obsolete electronics have on their enterprises. The people I met were knowledgeable, passionate, and in many cases struggling to find a solution or make a business case to remedy their particular obsolescence problem.…
Once your electronic embedded board has reached EOL, but your system still needs to be viable, you will want to talk with an experienced equipment manufacturer that specializes in legacy sustainment. A Legacy Equipment Manufacturer (LEM) is a specialized embedded board producer that supports and services embedded board level products after OEM’s are no longer…
Innovative ways of thinking are tantamount to making changes in procedural methods. Just in Time (JIT) procurement for acquiring EOL’d embedded boards is often not an option for Legacy Equipment Manufacturing (LEM). Once an EOL notice has been issued and the parts for your system are no longer in production you’ll want to know the…
Obsolescence Management takes into account the life span of all the moving pieces of your complex system with a plan to replace obsolete parts as they age, before it becomes a crisis. This is not a simple process. Challenges include parts availability, diminishing materials, counterfeit avoidance and knowing where to look to find what you…
GDCA’s unique approach to manufacturing is driving the future of the Legacy electronics industry. We work together with our OEM partners to provide our customers with proactive obsolescence management and remanufacturing for commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products. Scrambling for parts should not come as a surprise in the life span of your machine and should be planned…
A Holistic Approach to Obsolescence with GDCA by Amelia Dalton The design cycle drum beats on. Your research and development team have been stressed for months. The constant push for “the next big thing” keeps you up at night. We’ve all been there. In this episode of Fish Fry, we look at how the ever-growing…
When you need an embedded board that is still in production, it is easy to call the OEM, order what you want, and receive delivery. Because everything needed to produce your product is still readily available, you don’t have to worry about issues like accessibility, documentation, or counterfeit parts. However, after the point when an…
Embedded World 2017 was a blast! After 2 weeks on the road of sub-zero temperatures in DC, Boston, Ottawa, and Montreal it was great to see spring for the first time in 2017 in Nürnberg (Nuremberg! German beer is best consumed in the sunshine!) At the fair, all the OEMs I spoke with were jam packed with…