Obsolescence Driven Design Refresh Planning for Sustainment-Dominated Systems

Many technologies have life cycles that are shorter than the life cycle of the product they are in. Life cycle mismatches caused by the obsolescence of technology (and particularly the obsolescence of electronic parts) results in high sustainment costs for long field life systems, e.g., avionics and military systems. This article presents a methodology for performing optimum design refresh planning for sustainment-dominated electronic systems based on forecasted technology obsolescence and a mix of obsolescence mitigation approaches ranging from lifetime buys to part substitution. The methodology minimizes the life cycle cost by determining the optimum combination of design refresh schedule for the system (i.e., when to design refresh) and the design refresh content for each of the scheduled design refreshes. The analysis methodology can be used to generate application-specific economic justifications for design refresh approaches to obsolescence management.