Obsolescence

Legacy Sustainment In-House: Hidden Risk for Embedded OEMs

What Happens When Embedded OEMs Keep Legacy Sustainment In-House? A quiet erosion that often ends in a sudden catastrophe.  The risk isn’t always a single, dramatic event; it’s a slow, silent drift. Systems degrade. Critical knowledge walks out the door. Customers grow frustrated. And leadership is often unaware of just how fragile their internal support has become until it’s too late. …

The Cost of Delay (ROI Aligned)

The Cost of Delay  As a Product Manager, you make hundreds of decisions a week. But what about the one you keep putting off? The one about the long tail of legacy products.  We’ve all done it. We look at a complex, non-urgent problem and we decide to wait. “We’ll get to it next quarter,” we…

Strengthening Long-Term Support: 2025 Reflections

As the 2025 year comes to an end and a new year approaches, Tania Scroggie offers her reflections as the OEM Relationship Director at GDCA over her experiences over the past year in her latest YouTube upload! Over the four episodes of “Tania’s Teachables” released in 2025, Tania explored the many conversations she’s had with…

Understanding the True Cost of Tech Obsolescence

Do we, as an industry, truly understand the full impact and cost of tech obsolescence? Over the past years, the team at GDCA has been doing our best to educate and illuminate the electronics industry on the impact that obsolescence has on every level of our supply chains. Traditionally, product obsolescence was simply managed in-house,…

The Inchworm Dilemma: Why Your Strategy Isn’t Moving Forward

Tania Scroggie is back with another episode of ‘Tania’s Teachables’ over on YouTube, this time exploring the hard truth of dealing with legacy electronics in today’s modern world of fast-paced technological advancement. ‘The Inchworm Dilemma’ explores a common challenge facing the support of legacy products–a lack of infrastructure.  Grand Plans that Stretch Your Company beyond…

Strategies for Managing Obsolete Semiconductors amidst Changing Global Markets and Supply Chain Issues

Semiconductors are literally the backbone of all electronics–and because of that, when a semiconductor becomes obsolete, finding support for it, whether that be replacement parts, fresh components, or repair services, goes from a routine thing to a major problem. Plus, with the current U.S. administration’s tariffs, both in-progress and implemented, the global semiconductor industry has…

Strategically Approaching a “Last Time Buy” Notice

The day you receive that “last time buy” (LTB) notice for a crucial embedded PCB or PCB component for your systems can be stressful–even if you know it’s coming. What if you still need that circuit board five to ten years after that LTB day? Suddenly, sourcing the required parts becomes a mad scramble, resulting…

The Recurring Nightmare: Obsolescence Strikes Again… and Again

Tania Scroggie is starting the new year with another installment of her short video series, Tania’s Teachables, on YouTube! Tania tackles the frustrating and recurring nightmare of embedded electronics obsolescence in her tenth video discussion.   The Nightmare of Obsolescence Nearly every OEM has experienced it. Customers grow frustrated and leave because the OEM cannot…

Understanding and Mitigating Obsolescence Risks in Embedded Systems

Electronics obsolescence is an inevitable and fundamental problem that many manufacturers and end-users face daily with their embedded systems. But it doesn’t have to be a big challenge–proper planning and support can help you save a lot of time, money, and effort that would otherwise be wasted trying to ‘manage’ obsolescence risk when it’s such…