FMECA-Based Risk Assessment Approach for Proactive Obsolescence Management

One of the most critical issues that can affect the useful life of a product is the obsolescence of its components or functionalities. To minimize its effects and bring long-term benefits to systems, obsolescence must be proactively managed. A critical step in the process of proactive obsolescence management is the obsolescence risk analysis of critical components or functionalities. However, estimating the degree of obsolescence of multi-component systems is an area that is still under-explored, particularly when interdependencies exist between components. This estimation can be more complicated where there is no prior knowledge about the interaction between components. We used Weibull’s distribution to model the components’ interaction and calculate the obsolescence degree of the global system. This approach is evaluated using a numerical example based on a meteorological data acquisition system. The obsolescence of main components of this system is modeled while taking into account the interaction between them. Results are presented and discussed while clarifying the scientific issues that should be tackled in future works.