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Prepare for obsolete circuits

When redesign is not an option, and an obsolete integrated circuit must be had, times get tough, real tough. No one really cares about, DMSMS, diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages, when crunch time comes. The truth of the matter is that parts obsolescence is becoming a bigger and bigger problem as suppliers shift gears to produce the most profitable parts in a given time and environment. Hard to find semiconductors and other electrical parts are going to be giving a lot more people problems in the years to come. Global demand can call on global supply much more easily than ever before. One minute an electrical engineer will be fine tuning your circuit, and an hour later he could be told by his boss that he needs to work on a new, more profitable part to help run the latest mobile hand set. And this change, of course, will in time, cause you some major headaches, if you don't know exactly where they dump all the old parts that allow your machines to work.

The statistics for obsolescence are pretty clear: memory chips become obsolete in a year and a half, and cpus can go the way of the dinosaur in as little as 2 years. But that is not the worst of the procurement dilemma. The worst part of the sourcing equation is that manufacturers have no real incentive to keep you informed of production runs on their parts. They may give you a one month notice when they decide to stop producing a specific part. But that is not going to be nearly enough time to prepare for a shift in sourcing. If the machines that you are running must absolutely have the old parts, you need to buy as many old parts as you can find. And, if the old parts are hard to come by, or have been bought by someone else, you need to find some type of replacement integrated circuit that could possibly come close to doing the job of the original.

If you don't anticipate these changes, you will inevitably be in quite a bind when your parts are no longer manufactured, and the manufacturer has no intention of giving you the design literature necessary for procurement or a cheap redesign. You obviously don't want to be stuck with a reverse engineering redesign job. These cost 10s of thousands, to millions depending on the extent of the work. Either you buy as many of the original parts as you can get your hands on, or you make a commitment to being able to anticipate sourcing changes and how they will affect your company. Unfortunately, the former is often cheaper, and will keep your business running smoothly more often. However, obviously, it may not keep your business running competitively. So, the best strategy is to anticipate how to keep your business in newly obsolete parts. That is, learn how to keep a reasonable inventory of recently out of production integrated circuits, semi conductors and other electronic parts, to keep your business running until you can upgrade to the newest thing.

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