DMSMS

Last updated March 18, 2023

Diminishing manufacturing sources and material shortages (DMSMS) or diminishing manufacturing sources (DMS) is defined as: "The loss or impending loss of manufacturers of items or suppliers of items or raw materials."^[1]^[2] DMSMS and obsolescence are terms that are often used interchangeably. However, obsolescence refers to a lack of availability due to statutory or process changes and new designs,^[2] whereas DMSMS is a lack of sources or materials.

Impact

Although it is not strictly limited to electronic systems, much of the effort regarding DMSMS deals with electronic components that have a relatively short lifetime.

Causes

Primary components

DMSMS is a multifaceted problem because there are at least three main components that need to be considered. First, a primary concern is the ongoing improvement in technology. As new products are designed, the technology that was used in their predecessors becomes outdated, making it more difficult to repair the equipment. Second, the mechanical parts may be harder to acquire because fewer are produced as the demand for these parts decreases. Third, the materials required to manufacture a piece of equipment may no longer be readily available.

Product life cycle

It is widely accepted that all electronic devices are subject to the product life cycle. As products evolve into updated versions, they require parts and technology distinct from their predecessors. However, the earlier versions of the product often still need to be maintained throughout their life cycle. As the new product becomes predominant, there are fewer parts available to fix the earlier versions and the technology becomes outdated.

According to EIA-724 there are 6 distinct phases of a product's life cycle: Introduction, Growth, Maturity, Saturation, Decline, and Phase-Out.^[3] To the uninitiated these terms often seem abstract and odd. These terms are often used in databases covering parts life cycle so it is important to have an understanding of what they mean. Although the terms "Introduction", "Growth", and "Decline" are generally accepted without much explanation, the terms "Maturity", "Saturation", and "Phase-Out" are less obvious.

"Maturity" in this case refers to state in the product's life cycle where sales of the product first reach its sales peak and begins to level off. Having survived the Introduction and Growth phases, products in this phase have a low probability of being discontinued.

"Saturation" refers to a state in the product's life cycle where sales have leveled off and, towards the end of this phase, first begin to decline. The term "Saturation" is confusing to many and can be explained in reference to its equivalent in chemistry where a substance can no longer be dissolved in a liquid. A product can be said to have "saturated" its market. The decline at the end of the Saturation phase gives the first indications of the products end of life.

"Phase-out" refers to the final stages of a product's decline ending in the product being altogether discontinued by the supplier.

Mitigation

DMSMS is managed through various risk mitigation efforts, both during the manufacturing of a product as well as later in the products life cycle. DMSMS is a hot topic in military supply where the usable lifetime of an electronic system may far exceed the availability of the components used to produce that system.^[4]

Devices in phases 5 and 6 of a product's life cycle require caution on the part of designers and product support engineers to assure that system components are indeed available at the time of production.

Some examples of the signs and symptoms of a DMSMS issue are:

Notification of a part that will be discontinued in the future.
A system that uses a unique part that can only be produced by a single manufacturer.
Dwindling of parts for a system, but no replacements over time.
Planning in a new system design that does not consider future obsolescence problems.
A parts list that contains an end-of-life cycle part before a system has gone into production.

The core methodology for DMSMS analysis has been to make direct contact with the supplier of an item. Direct contact takes the form of phone, e-mail or other communication with a competent supplier representative. This is essential in the management of commercial off-the-shelf products and assemblies. The main items of concern in a DMSMS analysis are:

Is the item an active product?
Is the item a good seller (generates good revenue for the company)?
Is the item slated for obsolescence for any reason (e.g. replaced by a newer version)?

Monitoring

Other methodologies involve subscription to data services which monitor parts lists, known as a Bill of Materials (BOM), for activity on any one part in the user's list. Often both the classic methodology and the data subscription methodology will be used in conjunction to provide a more complete assessment of a part's availability and lifetime.^[4]

Lifetime buy

One strategy used to combat DMS is to buy additional inventory during the production run of a system or part, in quantities sufficient to cover the expected number of failures. This strategy is known as a lifetime buy. An example of this is the many 30- and 40-year-old railway locomotives being run by small operators in the United Kingdom. These operators will often buy more locomotives than they actually require, and keep a number of them stored as a source of spare parts.

Take action

It is important and responsible to use a DMSMS risk management plan to ensure parts are available when you need them. Long range planning must occur for every key piece of equipment, establishing "when" and "what" parts will be replaced or redesigned. Try to foresee potential equipment problems. Consider replacing obsolete parts and equipment. New methods of design engineering allow for the open exchange of parts as technology changes. There are also companies out there giving assistance and consult in seminars and workshops, audits and implementation of effective DMSMS processes.

Related Research Articles

Product life-cycle management (PLM) is the succession of strategies by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stages.

Obsolescence is the process of becoming antiquated, out of date, old-fashioned, no longer in general use, or no longer useful, or the condition of being in such a state. When used in a biological sense, it means imperfect or rudimentary when compared with the corresponding part of other organisms.

Value engineering (VE) is a systematic analysis of the functions of various components and materials to lower the cost of goods, products and services with a tolerable loss of performance or functionality. Value, as defined, is the ratio of function to cost. Value can therefore be manipulated by either improving the function or reducing the cost. It is a primary tenet of value engineering that basic functions be preserved and not be reduced as a consequence of pursuing value improvements. The term "value management" is sometimes used as a synonym of "value engineering", and both promote the planning and delivery of projects with improved performance

In economics and industrial design, planned obsolescence is a policy of planning or designing a product with an artificially limited useful life or a purposely frail design, so that it becomes obsolete after a certain pre-determined period of time upon which it decrementally functions or suddenly ceases to function, or might be perceived as unfashionable. The rationale behind this strategy is to generate long-term sales volume by reducing the time between repeat purchases. It is the deliberate shortening of a lifespan of a product to force people to purchase functional replacements.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Systems development life cycle</span> Systems engineering terms

In systems engineering, information systems and software engineering, the systems development life cycle (SDLC), also referred to as the application development life cycle, is a process for planning, creating, testing, and deploying an information system. The SDLC concept applies to a range of hardware and software configurations, as a system can be composed of hardware only, software only, or a combination of both. There are usually six stages in this cycle: requirement analysis, design, development and testing, implementation, documentation, and evaluation.

A product's service life is its period of use in service. Several related terms describe more precisely a product's life, from the point of manufacture, storage, and distribution, and eventual use. Service life has been defined as "a product's total life in use from the point of sale to the point of discard" and distinguished from replacement life, "the period after which the initial purchaser returns to the shop for a replacement". Determining a product's expected service life as part of business policy involves using tools and calculations from maintainability and reliability analysis. Service life represents a commitment made by the item's manufacturer and is usually specified as a median. It is the time that any manufactured item can be expected to be "serviceable" or supported by its manufacturer.

In industry, product lifecycle management (PLM) is the process of managing the entire lifecycle of a product from its inception through the engineering, design and manufacture, as well as the service and disposal of manufactured products. PLM integrates people, data, processes, and business systems and provides a product information backbone for companies and their extended enterprises.

Purchasing is the process a business or organization uses to acquire goods or services to accomplish its goals. Although there are several organizations that attempt to set standards in the purchasing process, processes can vary greatly between organizations.

Reliability engineering is a sub-discipline of systems engineering that emphasizes the ability of equipment to function without failure. Reliability describes the ability of a system or component to function under stated conditions for a specified period of time. Reliability is closely related to availability, which is typically described as the ability of a component or system to function at a specified moment or interval of time.

Design for Excellence or Design For Excellence, are terms and expansions used interchangeably in the existing literature, where the X in design for X is a variable which can have one of many possible values. In many fields X may represent several traits or features including: manufacturability, power, variability, cost, yield, or reliability. This gives rise to the terms design for manufacturability, design for inspection (DFI), design for variability (DfV), design for cost (DfC). Similarly, other disciplines may associate other traits, attributes, or objectives for X.

Integrated logistic support (ILS) is a technology in the system engineering to lower a product life cycle cost and decrease demand for logistics by the maintenance system optimization to ease the product support. Although originally developed for military purposes, it is also widely used in commercial customer service organisations.

The Product Life Cycle Theory is an economic theory that was developed by Raymond Vernon in response to the failure of the Heckscher-Ohlin model to explain the observed pattern of international trade. The theory suggests that early in a product's life-cycle all the parts and labor associated with that product come from the area where it was invented. After the product becomes adopted and used in the world markets, production gradually moves away from the point of origin. In some situations, the product becomes an item that is imported by its original country of invention. A commonly used example of this is the invention, growth and production of the personal computer with respect to the United States.

The technology life-cycle (TLC) describes the commercial gain of a product through the expense of research and development phase, and the financial return during its "vital life". Some technologies, such as steel, paper or cement manufacturing, have a long lifespan while in other cases, such as electronic or pharmaceutical products, the lifespan may be quite short.

An independent test organization is an organization, person, or company that tests products, materials, software, etc. according to agreed requirements. The test organization can be affiliated with the government or universities or can be an independent testing laboratory. They are independent because they are not affiliated with the producer nor the user of the item being tested: no commercial bias is present. These "contract testing" facilities are sometimes called "third party" testing or evaluation facilities.

Generalised Enterprise Reference Architecture and Methodology (GERAM) is a generalised enterprise architecture framework for enterprise integration and business process engineering. It identifies the set of components recommended for use in enterprise engineering.

The manufacturing readiness level (MRL) is a measure to assess the maturity of manufacturing readiness, similar to how technology readiness levels (TRL) are used for technology readiness. They can be used in general industry assessments, or for more specific application in assessing capabilities of possible suppliers.

ISO 26262, titled "Road vehicles – Functional safety", is an international standard for functional safety of electrical and/or electronic systems that are installed in serial production road vehicles, defined by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) in 2011, and revised in 2018.

Cannibalization of machine parts, in the maintenance of mechanical or electronic systems with interchangeable parts, refers to the practice of removing parts or subsystems necessary for repair from another similar device, rather than from inventory, usually when resources become limited. The source system is usually crippled as a result, perhaps only temporarily, in order to allow the recipient device to function properly again.

Integrated vehicle health management (IVHM) or integrated system health management (ISHM) is the unified capability of systems to assess the current or future state of the member system health and integrate that picture of system health within a framework of available resources and operational demand.

The Center for Advanced Life Cycle Engineering (CALCE) is a university research facility focused on risk assessment, management, and mitigation for electronic products and systems. CALCE is the largest electronic products and systems research center focused on electronics reliability and is dedicated to providing a knowledge and resource base to support the development of competitive electronic components, products, and systems. CALCE is located at the University of Maryland in College Park, Maryland, and was founded by Professor Michael Pecht.

References

↑ Department of Defense regulation 4140.1-R, DoD Supply Chain Management Regulation
1 2 Hagan, Gary (November 2009), Glossary of Defense Acquisition Acronyms & Terms (PDF) (13th ed.), Fort Belvoir, Virginia: Defense Acquisition University Press, archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-02-13
↑ EIA-724, para. 3.2
1 2 Bjoern Bartels, Ulrich Ermel, Peter Sandborn and Michael G. Pecht (2012). Strategies to the Prediction, Mitigation and Management of Product Obsolescence, 1st. Ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. ISBN 1-11-814064-8.

External links

DMSMS Knowledge Sharing Portal

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[DOD-1] Department of Defense regulation 4140.1-R, DoD Supply Chain Management Regulation

[DAU-Glossary-2] 1 2 Hagan, Gary (November 2009), Glossary of Defense Acquisition Acronyms & Terms (PDF) (13th ed.), Fort Belvoir, Virginia: Defense Acquisition University Press, archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-02-13

[3] EIA-724, para. 3.2

[autogenerated1-4] 1 2 Bjoern Bartels, Ulrich Ermel, Peter Sandborn and Michael G. Pecht (2012). Strategies to the Prediction, Mitigation and Management of Product Obsolescence, 1st. Ed., John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey. ISBN 1-11-814064-8.

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