Industry survey review of obsolescence management strategies in performance based contracts

This research study has been developed through a cross sectorial benchmarking survey and represents the development of a descriptive framework from a management strategy perspective. The survey is based on face to face interviews and a questionnaire about obsolescence and availability in defence and non defence sectors. The high research elements reported are related to the set of obsolescence factors and unavailability drivers identified, the availability modelling methodologies studied, and the categorization of obsolescence management strategies from suppliers to customer perspective reported. The main results presented in this research are the evolution of the state of the art of the availability modelling techniques, the justification of the lack of availability predictive tools based on a list of typical commercial tools applied in the industry today and the positive and negative outcomes of using commercial of the shelf (COTS) as design criteria in long life systems.