Obsolescence Management
Obsolescence can’t be prevented. We can help you mitigate its impacts well in advance to extend the lifecycle of your mission-critical systems and equipment and retain the value of resources that would otherwise be lost.
Reduce risk & costs
Obsolescence management can help you proactively mitigate the risks that shorten the lifecycle of a critical product or system. This could be down to sourcing issues, increased lead times, regulatory changes, discontinued components, parts becoming unavailable or hard to find, or other unforeseen disruptions.
Without advance planning, management and mitigation strategies, obsolescence can cause huge productivity, efficiency, safety, sustainability and cost issues. Obsolescence management can help you anticipate and address these risks to minimise their impact and prevent costly production issues. Our obsolescence management consultation and support services are designed to be deployed at any stage of the project or equipment lifecycle, from concept to pre-disposal.
They can help you mitigate the risks and costs associated with obsolescence and keep your mission-critical operations on track.
Obsolescence Management Strategies & Plans
Our highly experienced team of Obsolescence Management Practitioners can assist with:
- Project, programme and corporate obsolescence management strategy development and delivery
- Specific project, programme and corporate obsolescence management plan (OMP) development and delivery
- Independently assessing and updating existing OMPs
- Facilitating obsolescence management stakeholder workshops
- Encouraging culture change and articulating the benefits of proactive obsolescence management
- Supply chain resilience assessments – are your sub-contractors and suppliers managing obsolescence effectively?
COMPaSSWeb
COMPaSSWeb is our secure, UK-based proprietary web portal, which serves as a client hub for all our obsolescence management services.
We’ve developed it to support efficient and effective obsolescence risk decision-making based on the internationally recommended IEC62402 cycle of equipment risk management analysis, monitoring, reporting and mitigation. Its primary features include:
- Multi-project Bills of Material (BoM) Management in complete hierarchical structures
- BoM risk assessments in accordance with IEC62402:2019
- Component obsolescence monitoring
- Intuitive, user-friendly project and equipment dashboards
- Risk management, mitigations and solutions
- Risk and obsolescence report generation
- Customer alerts and status change notifications
- Last time buy register
Obsolescence mitigation and resolution
Where obsolescence issues have been proactively identified or our risk assessments have highlighted components and assemblies at high risk, our specialist team can help you mitigate and resolve these issues.
Solutions can vary depending on each circumstance, with one or more of the following being employed:
- We can carry out a ‘Lifetime Buy’ before the obsolescence issue occurs and assist with calculating the quantities required to support your equipment
- Where we have proactively identified an obsolescence issue, we can conduct the Last Time Buy (LTB) on your behalf
- Lifetime and Last Time Buys can be stored in our environmentally controlled long-term storage facilities
- Where no LTB is being offered, we can liaise with the manufacturer or supplier to see if continued production can be secured
- Investigating possible aftermarket sources or trawling the ‘Grey Market’
- Proposing potential alternatives
Pricing depends on the solution required, the number of components being monitored and the contract length. To request a quotation for monitoring your parts, please email antony.elliott@cmcauk.co.uk.
Proactive Obsolescence
The Challenge: Do you experience problems when critical items are no longer available due to obsolescence, but only find out when it is too late?
Our Solution
Proactive monitoring of individual components’ availability status on a regular basis
CMCA(UK)’s solutions range from simple monitoring of your critical components with email alerts, Product Change Notices (PCN)’s, right through to a customer-owned bespoke database. This can simply be a list of disassociated parts, or it can contain full equipment structure indentation with a customer-updatable Obsolescence Solution Management section. This section can include options such as “Design Out”, “Life-Time Buy” and also a materials data section which could include Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) information and in-house stock levels.
We are not only limited to electronic components, although obviously they form a large percentage of potential problem items. We cover all types of commodities, including electro-mechanical, mechanical, pneumatic, hydraulic, and drilling along with things like oils, petroleums and chemicals. We have even been asked to monitor an individual who supplies a key service to an organisation.
- Enjoy proactive management of obsolescence and never be forced to fire fight a problem again
- No more costly search and research time by senior engineers
- Enhanced through-life support of your equipment
- Avoid expensive re-designs
- Reduced through-life costs
Pricing is dependent on the solution required, the number of components being monitored and the length of contract. To request a budgetary quotation for the monitoring of your parts, please email antony.elliott@cmcauk.co.uk.
Work with us
Why CMCA(UK)?
CMCA(UK) is the UK’s foremost subject matter expert in obsolescence management. We have a proven track record of providing this expertise to the Ministry of Defence, along with many other Government departments and commercial clients across the UK and beyond. Our services can be tailored to meet your specific needs but typically include:
- Obsolescence management strategy advice
- Obsolescence planning
- Procurement solutions
- Supply chain and inventory management
- Equipment health checks and impact appraisals
- Component tracking within Bills of Materials
- Advanced notification of impending obsolescence
- Mitigation options
- Sourcing, procurement and storage of critical components and assemblies
Our approach is compliant with industry standards, including IEC62402:2019. We also pride ourselves on developing solutions and innovations that go above and beyond the accepted industry standards to help keep your supply chain operations resilient, agile and futureproof.
