MANAGING OBSOLESCENCE


obsolescence may cause the effective obsolescence of hardware, and vice versa.


Another weak link that organizations have is their fundamental inability to make a business case for anything other than reactive management of obsoles- cence. A business case minimally requires that a cost avoidance be estimated, or better yet that an actual return on invest- ment be estimated.


These require the ability to perform viable life-cycle cost modeling for the system, which is difficult.


Be careful: The commonly used cost avoid- ance accumulation method (via comparison to the “next most expensive resolution” used by many DMSMS management organizations to justify their existence)


TESTING PROGRAM SOFTWARE


Ron Mercatili, electronics engineer, validates software for the Miniature Airborne GPS Receiver Test Station. (U.S. Army photo by Steve Grzezdzinski.)


Some electronic board-level aftermarket manufacturing and emulation also exist. Strategic planning support exists in the form of tools that perform life-cycle cost analysis of different sustainment strate- gies and can thereby optimize mixtures of reactive mitigation and strategic manage- ment activities.


Q. Does industry have any inherent incentive to keep the Army network from rapidly becoming obsolete, or does the Army need to create these incentives?


A. The mainstream electronics industry has little incentive to make things easier for the Army. The supply chain for electronic parts is driven by personal computers, cell phones, and other high-volume applica- tions. Unfortunately, several global issues have recently conspired to complicate this issue in the shorter term: emergence from a worldwide economic recession and the earthquake in Japan.


106 Army AL&T Magazine


produces a metric that indicates how hard an organization works, but it is generally not a valid life-cycle cost, and it won’t sell strategic treatments of the problem.


Q. How does the need for interoperabil- ity with other services fit into this already complex equation?


A. One possible byproduct of this require- ment is that there may be a larger set of common parts and assemblies between services. This increases the overall demand for parts to maintain the systems and means that the services could poten- tially consolidate supply and demand of the common system elements.


Q. What expertise can industry offer to keep the Army network from rapidly becoming obsolete?


A. Right now, the majority of commercial support for obsolescence (DMSMS) man- agement is at the electronics “piece-part” level for standard parts, i.e., individual elec- tronic parts such as integrated circuits that are not customized or modified. At this level, there are many commercial database tools that can provide obsolescence sta- tus, Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) compliance, and obsolescence risk forecasts. No such commercial data- base for obsolescence status or forecasting exists today at the commercial-off-the- shelf assembly level or for COTS software.


At the electronic piece-part level, commer- cial aftermarket suppliers and emulation solutions also exist. Emulation solutions mean production of legacy parts that are qualified by form, fit, and function to match the obsolete part, but are fabricated using newer technologies; needless to say, this is usually not an inexpensive solution.


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