Government/Military Trends
July 2004
The problem of parts obsolescence in weapons systems
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The concept of parts obsolescence is odd in most commercial, consumer-direct industries. Consumer products are driven by the fickle nature of consumers, who always want electronics to be smaller, cheaper and faster than before -- and willingly throw away a gadget after two or three years to get a better model. With computers, cellular phones and pagers, televisions and other electronics, the consumer appetite for “the next big thing” drives product lifecycles shorter and shorter. To keep up with this continuing demand and current technology, parts manufacturers phase out parts that use yesterday’s technology, pursuing the most lucrative market for their components.
But, for products intended to last longer than a few years -- airplanes, cars and military weapons systems – phase outs of parts and electronic components severely impacts the government’s ability to support these systems, and significantly raises the costs of maintaining them over their lifecycle.
Product lifecycles for military equipment are typically 20 to 30 years. These built-to-last products are nearly guaranteed to outlive most of the internal components that make up the final product. The wave of electronics and materials innovations in the past ten years accelerated parts obsolescence, making it a bigger problem for the military. With weapon systems 20, 30 or more years old, often replacement parts are no longer available. This decrease in component availability is known as DMSMS, or Diminishing Manufacturing Sources and Material Shortages.
The problem of rising parts obsolescence compounded with the United States engagement in Iraq because of the heavier use of weapons and other military equipment. Heavier use of equipment means faster consumption of parts needed to keep the equipment operational. Part replacement availability becomes critical to mission readiness, and costs for supporting critical weapons systems increases from lack of part availability.
Another aspect to the parts obsolescence problem is the fact that the military typically has very long development lead times, contrasting the commercial sector where products are born and die in a couple of years. The consumer market holds a much greater financial pull on manufacturers. These companies understand the value of retiring electronics and ending productions lines when new materials and technology advances make current equipment obsolete. The government is a very small portion of the component manufacturers total market. The small numbers of parts needed by the government on an annual basis offers no incentive for component manufacturers to keep production lines moving. The costs to produce such a small quantity is just too expensive, and manufacturers cannot justify continued production of small quantities.
The government also has more limited resources for finding parts because fewer manufacturers exist, so less materials is available. The result? Escalating costs over the lifecycle of a weapons system or aircraft.
To resolve this disconnect between the life cycles of products and the parts that go in them, manufacturers must consider parts obsolescence strategies throughout the product lifecycle. To cope with operational readiness issues, the military needs to deal with parts obsolescence issues on an ongoing basis and develop strategies for coping with the problem.
Options for dealing with parts obsolescence
So what happens when a part is needed to support a weapons system? Typically, engineers undertake four steps to try to correct the problem. Costs escalate with each option.
Substitution/Alternate: If a part is no longer available, the ideal solution is to find an alternate or a substitute -- a different part with the same or similar form, fit and function. Though this is the least costly solution, there are still great costs for the engineers tasked with this daunting project. Engineers typically waste a lot of time searching for parts across multiple data sources -- contacting each company, getting a product catalog and retrieving the data needed to verify substitution. This task repeats for each potential supplier, and makes conducting an exhaustive search impossible because of the inability to locate all available sources.
Lifetime Buy: If good quantities of a part are available, another option is to purchase enough parts to meet the predicted need of the system’s life span. To accomplish this, the engineer must locate enough inventory, typically from aftermarket sources. This option results in extensive up-front costs as well as ongoing storage fees. There is also the risk of buying too many parts, of parts being lost over time or of wasting resources if production is halted prematurely or a system is permanently grounded. Parts may become unusable as well. Parts quality deteriorates over time from oxidation, dust, dried compounds and discoloration.
Reclaim: If the engineer cannot find a replacement part or enough inventory, the next choice is to research part to reclaim or salvage from other equipment that uses the same original component. This option also involves significant cost, time and risk. The engineer needs to locate a product the part was used in, determine if there is a good supply of salvaged items, remove the components and sometimes refurbish them to meet quality criteria. Foreign militaries will even pull component parts off other pieces of their own equipment, effectively grounding a portion of their own fleet to keep the rest working.
Redesign: The last option available is the redesign or re-engineering of the part or assembly. This is, by far, the most costly alternative for parts obsolescence. In fact, the United States Government Defense Microelectronics Agency estimates that the cost of a redesign ranges from $100,000 to $400,000 or more. This includes the costs for non-recurring engineering expense as well as re-qualifying the product for the applicable industry standards.
Typically, agencies and equipment manufacturers develop both short-term and long-term strategies for parts obsolescence. Such a strategy might include buying a short term supply of parts to last until a part redesign gets implemented.
To help deal with the ongoing issue of DMSMS, both manufacturers and government agencies need processes for Obsolescence Management. With the Iraq War’s increased consumption of parts, the necessity to develop long-term solutions becomes more critical to military operational readiness.