The Impact of Component Obsolescence

Contradiction always beleaguers people and each industry. With the ongoing technology innovation, material, parts and products have to increasingly shorten the lifecycle and upgrade to meet customers’ growingly demand. But at the same time, we can not deny, part obsolescencebrings large burden to OEMs and EMS, notably those in such long-lifecycle segments as medical, aerospace, military and defense devices.

                        

In recent years, component obsolescence becomes especially catchy, for the resulting costs loss, such as redesigning product and stopping production.

Although parts supplier will issues a notice telling buyers they have six months to place purchase orders and then the part will become obsolete after 12 months, the EOL or PCNs usually can not be available to many buyers, as such buyers have to seek for outdated component from open market or aftermarkets, which generate the threat of counterfeit or high fees to buyers.

Even the end-of-life (EOL) and product change notices (PCNs) access buyers, there is still challenge for them to manage the increasingly more and more EOL and PCNs, because product lifecycles are generally getting shorter than they were in the past. Often the shorter the product lifecycle, the quicker components become obsolete, and the more EOL and PCNs are.

“Another issue is a buyer at one site may get the EOL notice, but “doesn't know what to do with it. In a large company it may not be known which sites are using the part” said Cliff Frescura, the CEO of PCNAlert, a company that provides software and services that help companies manage component obsolescence.

For defense and aerospace industries, component obsolescence usually means dilemma. Technology innovation and product renewal can benefit enterprises with more market shares, but the cost to qualify a new component is huge, how to choose?

Component obsolescence will always be with us, part obsolescence management is needed; tracking the product lifecycle information to make a forecasting would be better. Then how to monitor the life time of electronic component?

The Application Range of SCM

Since its date of birth, Single chip microcomputer has always showed its attractiveness to electronic engineers, leading to it is widely used in instrumentation, industrial automation, household appliances, medical equipment, office automation equipment, security monitoring and other fields, which covers all the respects of human life. The adoption of SCM moves circuit’s design focus from hardware design (traditional circuit design) to software (micro-control technology). The shortcoming in the traditional circuit design is the very complex hardware design, long development circle, largest consumption of manpower, material and financial resources; even some smart control circuit can’t be available through traditional circuit design when designing relative complicated control circuit. But this case can be easily achieved by SCM’s software programming. Simple circuit, powerful functionality, reliable quality is the prime reason for SCM’s widely usage. Today, electrical appliance sees frequent upgrading and replacement, increasingly small size, growingly intelligent control, more and more powerful function, mounting reliable quality, which all should be attributed to the embedded application of SCM. 
1. Application in smart instrument
SCM is widely used in instrument to realize analog and digital conversion and processing. With the help of sensor, voltage, power, frequency, humidity, temperature, flow, velocity, thickness, angle, length, distance, hardness, elements, pressure, gravity, volume, brightness, waveform, magnetic sensing and other physical quantities can be achieved. SCM control enables instrument to be digital, intelligent, miniaturized and intuitive; in addition, remote measurement and data acquisition is available through SCM serial communication.
2. Adoption in the field of industrial automation
In industrial control, automatic control, automatic monitoring, data acquisition, industrial controllers, industrial site network communications as well as mechatronics automatic control system all can not be avoided from SCM. As for the relatively complex large-scale industrial control systems, SCM can achieve smart control, intelligent data acquisition, remote automatic control, on-site automatic management, allowing the real industrial automation. For instance, the industrial robot control system is a multi-machine network system composed by central controller, sensory systems, walking system, grappling system and other nodes, each small system of which are controlled by SCM.

3. Usage in home appliance

Current or future appliance at home or abroad will access to SCM, as home appliance moves to multifunctional and intelligent, automated direction. Those appliances without SCM intelligent control will be phased out. 

4. Application in the field of computer communications and security monitoring systems
The SCM generally have the communication interface, enabling to easily conduct data communication with computers and providing technical condition for the communication between computers and equipment. Such applications include telephone and monitoring equipment, building automation communication call system, firework alarm systems and video surveillance systems, wireless and wired intercom system.
5. Adoption in the field of medical equipment
SCM has considerable usage in medical devices, such as ventilator analyzer monitors, diagnostic equipment and hospital beds call system, and so on.
6. in automotive electronic product
Current vehicles concentrate display system, power, speed, pressure monitoring and control systems, autopilot systems, navigation systems, security systems, communication system and operation monitor (black box), which should be attributed to SCM.
7. Usage in office automation equipment
A large number of communication and office equipments in modern office are equipped with SCM, including printers, copiers, fax machines, plotters, attendance machine, telephone, keyboard decoder in general-purpose computer and disk drive.
8. Targeting commercial marketing device
The LEDinformation display, electronic scales, cash registers, bar code readers, IC card swipe machine, taxi meter, as well as storage and safety monitoring system, mall security systems, air conditioning systems, refrigeration insurance system widely used in commercial marketing system are controlled by SCM.
In addition, SCM is also extensively available in business, financial services, scientific research, education, defense, aerospace and other fields.

The broad adoption of SCM not only enjoys us the attentive service brought by new electronic products and novel technology, and also makes our living environment safe, comfortable and convenient: with SCM as the main control, our production and life instrument becomes more advanced and intelligent, reducing labor while increasing work efficiency and safety factor.