The continuous renewal of technology increasingly shortens the lifecycle of electronic parts, bringing OEM and MES manufacturer the risk of re-designing products, ending production line and having to pay higher to buy parts through other channels as well as accessing bogus products. In order to avoid the huge cost loss caused by component obsolescence, OEM or EMS enterprises should makes preparations. The following exhibits several methods.
1. Choose the right device
Facing the inevitable accelerated discontinued component problem, the smart OEM or EMS will carefully considers the life status of parts in the initial design stage and opt for the right equipment. Their procurement staff and design engineers also have know-how about the lifecycle and the possible EOL date. Aiming at the bill of materials (BOM)，they will access more than one supplier or alternative solutions to prevent the difficulty to find alternative parts and redesign products.
In addition, they would sign agreements with component manufacturers to explicitly the relevant responsibility of dealing with discontinued part problem. At present, the EOL notification issued by component maker generally includes the last order time and the last shipment time, ranging from one month to one year. 6 months are the lead time for machine manufacturers in electronics industry to handle inventory, replace devices and notify customers. Among the agreement, OEM or EMS enterprises can require component manufacturers to advance the EOL forecast time to over half a year, and ask them to send EOL information on-time.
2. Real-time track the part EOL information
In fact, component manufacturers also do not beleaguer OEM and EMS customer. They will attempt to help customers to move the inventory during the component EOL notification and rapidly achieve device replacement and product upgrading. As a result, in terms of discontinued parts, what is the most important is to timely get the EOL information of component manufacturers. But this is not easy. Although component makers will send the EOL notice to each customer, they can not ensure all related personnel to get the information in-time. Designers may still mistakenly select the expired parts in the unknowingly case. Therefore, OEM and EMS companies can seek help from the third-party database tools to track and monitor the life status of equipment in the BOM; and look for alternative and upgraded devices.
3. Adopt suitable strategy
Despite the sufficient pre-work, the short shortage of the supply chain would still occur inevitable. When encountering component obsolescence problem, OEM and EMS enterprises should design a complete set of strategies. Currently, there are four common practices: first, purchase enough devices used for related products in lifecycle before the deadline; second, look for alternative components and solutions; third, customize products from aftermarket manufacturers; four, seek help from some specialized independent distributors who offers hard-to-find devices search service.
4. Integrate supply chain resources and optimize production process
The new supply chain project refers is to achieve the purpose of adding value, cutting cost and improving service competence through the detailed analysis of the company’s supply chain management system and process amelioration. The implementation of new supply chin contributes a lot to the inventory management of electronic manufacturing: Motorola shorten its material purchase cycle in China by 37%; Altera reduced two-month stock to slash 5% of its product cost; Woodward industrial control enterprise also ramps up its inventory turnover.
Tags：
component obsolescence, discontinued parts, outdated component