OEMs

Tania’s Teachable Discussions

A new video series for OEMs on the EOL cycle Legacy Expert Tania Scroggie of GDCA, Inc. presents a new series of short videos about end-of-life products and the strategies available to OEMs when their customers want support for an embedded system that is obsolete. Tania is GDCA’s OEM Relationships Director, responsible for coordinating between…

Winning the Battle but Losing the War

People may not know that Napoleon’s defeat at the hands of the Russian coalition was preceded by his capture of Moscow in 1812. Although that victory seemed decisive for him at the time, the cost of holding a captured city in the face of broken supply lines was crippling. As a result, his forces were…

Mergers and Acquisitions

Mergers and Acquisitions Sometimes we think the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. These days, it is not difficult to think this when social media allows us to paint beautiful pictures of who we are from a computer screen. During my marketing research, I came across a media campaign for an…

How to Effectively Prune Your Embedded Product Portfolio

In embedded computing, product pruning is the selective removal of certain products that no longer contribute to the health and growth of a company. Product families that are generating little or no profit for the company because of production complications, small market share, and/or outdated function can harm an embedded computer manufacturer’s bottom line. The…

Now’s the Time for Electronics OEMs to Shape Their Futures

In view of the COVID-19 disruption and anticipated aftermath in the embedded electronics industry, computer board OEMs face an existential challenge right now: How do they best allocate their resources to satisfy the competing objectives of 1) sustaining existing designs while simultaneously 2) inspiring and capturing the market for new designs? If OEMs spend too…

True Cost – An Introduction to Lifecycle Optimization

For embedded board OEMs, Lifecycle Optimization and your electronics product portfolio are an important part of profit and loss considerations when determining your business objectives. Aging products’ impact on ROI is regularly overlooked. Component obsolescence, manufacturing bottlenecks and increasing demands on operational resources create gaps that drag down new product introduction and can considerably slow…

Why We Do It—GDCA’s Values and Legacy Embedded Systems

When it comes to proactive obsolescence management, no company is more trusted than GDCA in maintaining legacy embedded systems. Our core values combined with our commitment to our employees, our original equipment manufacturer (OEM) partners, and their customers create an environment of mutual trust for everyone. We have learned that the best way to keep…

Don’t Let Your Old Designs Drag You Down

Business leaders don’t like process exceptions, because they’re inefficient and require a lot of special intervention to resolve. They also don’t like to discontinue old product designs that still have a few customers, because these orders help them make their sales targets and avoid customer issues. That makes sense, right? Maybe not as much sense…

5 Common Miscalculations OEMs Make That Impede Effective Proactive Obsolescence Management

…and What You Can Do Embedded and Application OEMs both face issues with their customers when product life cycles are longer than originally anticipated. Thinking critically about servicing systems past component EOL notices is vital for effective forecasting and maintenance, not only for end users but for manufacturers as well. Paying attention to the following…

Why Repeated LTBs Fail and Legacy Assurance Succeeds

Albert Einstein said, “Problems cannot be solved with the same thinking that created them,” and we agree. The speed with which technology is advancing causes new issues in system sustainability; problems that up until now, provide chronic headaches for most engineers and companies. For instance, note the vast differences between the processes of building embedded…