Obsolescence
Microgrid Death Spiral: The Argument Over “Obsolete” Power Infrastructure
May 7, 2014
In January of 2013, the Edison Electric Institute released a report titled “Disruptive Challenges: Financial Implications and Strategic Responses to a Changing Retail Electric Business”, which outlined a variety of challenges traditional power utilities will face in the upcoming years. The current power infrastructure in the United States wasn’t constructed with end-user power generation in…
A Tale of Two SHIELDS: Marvel Comics, DARPA, and Counterfeiting
April 9, 2014
Marvel Comic’s SHIELD (Strategic help Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division) and, slick as it is, it is more likely to wind up counterfeited than prevent counterfeiting It is a program devised by a secretive government agency. Its purpose is to organize and motivate the top actors in their fields to come together to prevent…
Drinking From a Too-Short Straw: The Brutal Costs of Mismanaging Obsolescence
March 12, 2014
It can be easy for those of us in the embedded industry to think of obsolescence as predominantly an electronics or software issue and to imagine its scope as limited to small- or medium-scale consequences. Unfortunately, the harsh reality is that obsolescence is a problem across many industries, and the consequences can be severe. The…
Keys to Managing DMSMS: A Clear Assessment of Obsolescence Risk
November 13, 2013
“Proactively consider DMSMS through[out] a system’s life cycle by anticipating potential DMSMS occurrences and taking appropriate logistics, acquisition, and budgeting steps to prevent DMSMS from adversely affecting readiness or total ownership cost.” SD-22 DMSMS Guidebook Continued from a previous post: Being Proactive While obsolescence management traditionally starts after products become mature, that is really waiting…
Software Obsolescence: Why Modernization Doesn’t Necessarily Mean “Modern”
September 18, 2013
For players in the embedded industry it is easy to forget how large the problem of obsolescence can be, especially beyond the component level. Recently, I was talking to a software engineer who had spent a year doing software modernization, as a result of upgrading a flight navigational system from the original code to Linux.…
Golf: A Good Thing Never Truly Becomes Obsolete
September 4, 2013
Every year at National Instruments NI Week in Austin, TX the GDCA team gets to enjoy a wave of hot weather that is only overshadowed by a tide of hot technology innovation. NI Week does a wonderful job of providing a forum for education and inspiration. As one of the few conferences where GDCA has…
Counterfeit Mitigation: The Trouble with “Tagging”
August 21, 2013
When the subject of counterfeit mitigation and avoidance comes up you generally find a couple of areas that people focus on: standards, test/inspection, and tagging. Tagging can involve many things, including specially etched marks, marks that show up only under certain lights, rare earth tags, and DNA tags. In general, these marks rely one or…
Are PCs becoming obsolete?
August 7, 2013
Recently on NPR I heard that PC sales have hit a record low. With the growing touch screen market, even Windows is focusing their innovation and development on the tablet market and with operating systems like the recently updated Windows 8. Bringing together the best of both worlds is the “convertible” market, where your “laptop”…
COTS: A “reactive” good idea
May 29, 2013
Following a directive from the US military in the early 1990s, the defense industry made a shift from using custom embedded electronic components made to military specifications to commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components. Since the overall share of the DoD as a consumer was expected to shrink over time, this move to reduce costs took a practical…
Sometimes Obsolescence is a Good Thing
April 9, 2013
Throughout my work with GDCA and all the issues around obsolescence, I have never come across someone who believes that obsolescence is something to be celebrated and welcomed. Everything associated with obsolescence is considered something to be avoided. The concept of planned obsolescence brings with it connotations of either designing a product to wear out…