Obsolescence Management
Written by Peter A. Buxbaum
United States armed services and defense agencies have been encouraged to use commercially available systems and products in recent years. Although the Department of Defense and commercial firms use some of the same products, the military faces a problem much more pronounced than in the private sector when these systems begin to age.
That’s because the military utilizes technology and other products over a much longer life cycle than does the private sector. And that longevity is going to be stretched out even further as budget constraints force DoD to squeeze as much usable life out of its systems as it can.
“The typical lifespan for a military system is much longer than for a commercial device,” said David Robinson, program manager for diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) at the Defense Logistics Agency’s Defense Supply Center Columbus. “Most government systems have been out there for 10 years or more. We’ll be flying B-52s for 100 years.”
The implication of limping along with older systems is that the original manufacturer of these systems may be out of business or may no longer be supporting a particular product with replacement parts. “Many of the systems out in the field today were developed in the 1970s and ’80s, if not the ’40s and ’50s,” said Willie Brown, director of obsolescence management services at BAE Systems in Fort Walton Beach, Fla.
“Especially in areas like telecommunications and information technology, the commercial product life cycle is decreasing while the government platform life cycle is increasing,” Brown added. “Manufacturers like Texas Instruments or Motorola may no longer be producing the parts military systems need.”
The question then becomes, what happens when one of these components goes bad? Ideally, said Brown, military programs should plan for the obsolescence of parts and components from the outset. And, while there is some movement in that direction, this is not yet a significant trend.
In reality, DoD obsolescence management proceeds along three lines, according to Lou Kratz, the corporate lead for logistics and sustainment at Lockheed Martin. “One is reactive,” he explained. “That is where you get a demand pattern no one anticipated and the vendor is long gone. The second is to make lifetime buys when the department receives notice that a vendor is going to stop production or go out of business. But that is very expensive, and it creates a lot of inventory.
“The third, which we prefer, is a proactive approach,” Kratz continued. “We road map the technologies and anticipate obsolescence, thereby replacing or refreshing systems before they become obsolete.”
The trend toward extending the usable lives of military systems has led some companies to incorporate obsolescence management in their product life cycle planning processes. “There is a mature weapons system we have been supporting for quite some time,” related Alan Howell, vice president of business development and marketing at Crane Aerospace and Electronics. “Due to some other program cancellations it will be in the U.S. military’s inventory for another seven to 10 years. As a result we are working with our customer to take a much more aggressive stance toward parts obsolescence, and how to make it more manageable, more affordable, and with minimal impact.”
DLA’s DMSMS program attempts to mitigate the impact of the lack of availability of parts that are about to become obsolete. “We get notices from manufacturers that say they will be discontinuing a product or product line,” said Robinson. “It could be one part or 5,000.”
Once DLA receives such a notice, it researches systems stock lists to determine if and where the effected parts are used and analyzes the situation to determine the likely demand for those products. If the parts obsolescence is likely to impact the operation of a system, the DLA is likely to place a hefty order for the part so that it can meet that demand.
The obsolescence programs that BAE manages places an emphasis on researching alternatives to presumably obsolete parts. “There have been cases where a part has been identified as obsolete, but we have gone out and identified sources of supply for those components,” said Brown. “We have a group dedicated to component research, and they have a 90-percent plus track record of finding alternative suppliers.”
Brown’s group saved the Air Force’s CV-22 Osprey program $2 million by avoiding having to redesign a part that was thought to be obsolete. “Most obsolescence issues can be resolved at a lower level of cost and time than the redesign of a component,” said Brown. “Obsolescence management should be focused on mitigating risk and avoiding redesigns.” BAE also supports a wide variety of aircraft programs, such as the Apache helicopter, the CV-22, the C-130, the B-1 and B-52 bombers, and the F-15 and F-16 fighters, with obsolescence management.
In some cases demand will come up for a part that is absolutely unavailable. Two alternatives remain: emulation and redesign. “If a component is truly a dead item, we have a program through which we build these parts for customers,” said DLA’s Robinson. Through a contract with the Sarnoff Corp. in Princeton, N.J., DLA reproduces obsolete processors and microcircuits for old legacy systems.
Redesign is similar to emulation and sometimes includes enhancements to the functionality of the original product. “The problem with redesign is that this stuff is usually 30 or 40 years old, and there is virtually no documentation on them,” said Eric Peterson, an obsolescence management program manager at Alion Science and Technology Corp. “We have to get into other people’s heads to figure out what they were thinking when they were designing the product and what were they trying to do.”
That’s why “replacing a component in communications gear is harder than new engineering,” said John VanDoren, a senior staff engineer at Dynamics Research Corp. in Andover, Mass.
The Marine Corps turned to Dynamics Research when it needed to replace obsolete circuit boards in one of its 1980s-vintage tactical communications systems in use in Iraq and Afghanistan. “We designed a new circuit board and replaced electronic components that gave them a form-fit functional replacement, so there would be no difference” in the operation of the system, said VanDoren.
In another case, the Marines came to Dynamics to re-engineer a die-cast aluminum box used to house switching equipment. The solution in this case, said VanDoren, was to fabricate a box out of a solid piece of aluminum at one-tenth of the cost. That project, which also involves replacing electronic wiring, will be delivered later this year.
Alion worked on a project that started out as a redesign of an antenna for the TRN-30 nondirectional radio beacon but ended up as an upgrade of the entire radio system. “We added some pretty nifty features,” said Peterson, including voice capability, self diagnostics and digital displays, all retrofitted into the original case. The retrofitted product was also lighter and less expensive than the original, Peterson added.
“We had to retrofit because there was no budget for a new product, but there was a budget for retrofitting,” he said.
At Naval Sea Systems Command, obsolescence management goes hand in hand with surface ship modernization. “Each platform has systems, and each system comprises a variety of components,” said Rear Admiral Jim McManamon, NAVSEA’s deputy commander for surface warfare and the program manager for modernization and maintenance.
“We do a dance trying to keep track of overall ship performance and developing an understanding of performance, reliability and maintainability and what is driving some of the obsolescence.”
McManamon proceeds down two lines when it comes to mitigating obsolescence. For uniquely milspec components that are not likely to be replaced by commercially available products, he has made some lifetime buys of components or entered into performance-based logistics (PBL) arrangements with the original manufacturers. McManamon said he intends to use PBLs to keep track of parts obsolescence in the Navy’s Aegis weapon system.
But ship modernization often means replacing legacy systems with commercial off-the-shelf systems. “If we can modernize by getting rid of some legacy technologies and replacing them with new technology, that is a piece that adds complexity at some level, but it does also avoid some future obsolescence,” he said. “It is really all about keeping track of industry and maintaining health charts on critical systems. It’s not all looking backwards at legacy systems but also trying to look forward to do smart modernization and to avoid some obsolescence issues.”
Looking forward is what the proactive approach to obsolescence management is all about. Lockheed Martin manages dozens of obsolescence programs on the platforms and system that it supplies to the U.S. military. “Our support of the Navy’s HH-60 Seahawk helicopter completely eliminated back orders by implementation of a proactive obsolescence management program and by anticipating obsolescence through technology road mapping,” said Kratz.
Back orders come about when a part is no longer available to meet demand. “We have the responsibility to proactively manage obsolescence, so we do substitutions and upgrades as the technology matures,” said Kratz. “When we get that future order for an obsolete part we automatically ship the alternate. This allows us to go through qualification of replacement material based on the technology cycle not on as an emergency response to a use requirement.”
The company is able to anticipate obsolescence by analyzing systems down to their smallest levels and mapping the technology to project the technical obsolescence of parts. “Then we actively manage vendors to determine the availability of parts,” Kratz explained. “If we can’t get the vendor to commit to maintain the availability of current parts, we go ahead and qualify a new part ahead of time before demand actually shows up.” Lockheed Martin uses commercially available analytic tools as well as a computeraided design system to aid in this process.
In another case, Lockheed Martin is avoiding technology obsolescence in the Navy’s submarine fleet by using commercial processors to replace aging components in the subs’ mission computers instead of replacing individual chips. “As processors get faster and cheaper, we just put new ones in and never have to maintain the old ones,” said Kratz. “We are managing technology insertion by planning above and beyond obsolescence.”
Both of these Lockheed Martin-managed programs are part of a PBL contract the company has with its military customers. PBLs rely on the private sector to support military weapons systems by entering long-term logistics support contracts that are based on incentives to achieve specific performance goals.
“The submarine program was jointly developed with the Navy 10 years ago when money tightened up and the Navy could no longer afford to support the vessels the old way,” said Kratz. “The Navy came to Lockheed for an innovative solution, and together we developed a program that assured the availability of processors by keeping them updated all the time.” The helicopter PBL contract, which involves a joint venture with Sikorsky Aircraft Corp., requires Lockheed to assure material availability. “The most productive way to do that,” said Kratz, “is to proactively manage technology and obsolescence.”
Howell has found that taking a more proactive approach to obsolescence management has allowed Crane to add value to its services by providing performance enhancements. “By better partnering with our customers,” he said, “we are able to look at systems in a more holistic fashion. We might decide to replace a part because of its projected obsolescence, but we can also do a significant performance upgrading at no additional cost at the same time.”
As the military budget continues to tighten and a sharper focus is being placed on the sustainment of existing systems, obsolescence management receives greater emphasis, according to BAE’s Willie Brown. “The government will be using more performancebased logistics contracts as a means for managing obsolescence,” he said. “This pushes the requirement to sustain the system to the manufacturer, and the manufacturer pushes its requirements to their suppliers.”
PBLs can also save the government money. “One of the problems with reactive obsolescence management is that it costs a lot of money,” said Kratz. “Besides the costs involved in buying lifetime supplies and qualifying alternate sources, you also have the cost of equipment being down.
“Our studies have shown that PBLs have provided real direct savings of 17 percent on material and maintenance costs,” he added. “This is significant in helping the department meet its financial challenges.”
But not every program is managed under a PBL, Kratz noted. Although DoD has a policy of preferring PBLs for weapons systems support, the military continues to proceed down all three of the obsolescence management approaches: reacting to unexpected demand, maintaining large inventory stocks and proactively managing the process.
“On those programs where the government has PBLs, expectations are increasing,” he said. “In fact, the expectation is that the government will never have obsolescence problems again. But for materials not managed under a PBL, the government continues to struggle with obsolescence.” ♦