Dawn Dela Rosa, Director of Manufacturing at GDCA, takes the stage on our YouTube channel with a new three-part short video series exploring a recent sustainment challenge that we recently undertook for a military program struggling to find a source for their critical but obsolete hardware. The first episode introduces the major problem of this particular project and what GDCA did to solve it.
A Sustainment Project with an Inevitable Challenge
Mission critical electronics systems are often the most susceptible to obsolescence and supply chain issues, because they need to be in service at least five years or more–and more often than not, over several decades. And when the components for these systems become obsolete, they become increasingly more difficult to source in a way that is safe and reliable. For this particular military customer, GDCA knew that they had several components at risk of becoming obsolete, if they weren’t already.
Initially, we took a very proactive approach to sourcing, testing, and storing every available component that we could find to keep the program running. Our team went to extreme lengths to track down and secure those parts from sources worldwide, testing each and every component to make sure that they were safe and reliable.
However, despite all of our efforts, and the fact that we had built up what we’d assumed would be enough inventory, the inevitable happened–we ran out of a component that was absolutely critical to production. Without it, the customer’s program was at risk of shutting down.
A Proactive Response to Keep the System Running
As soon as GDCA’s team knew that we were going to run out of the component earlier than our forecasts had anticipated, we launched into action. Rather than telling the customer that there was nothing more we could do, our engineering team began a massive internal project to find a solution that could keep the customer’s system running without the need for that missing part. They redesigned the entire board, overcoming several technical hurdles in order to create a long-term solution that would sustain the customer’s system for years to come–and that’s just the beginning.
Over the next couple of weeks, Dawn will be continuing the story in our next YouTube uploads, exploring the various challenges that GDCA’s engineers overcame in order to provide a proper solution for our customers. Check out the first episode on GDCA’s YouTube channel as well so you don’t miss a thing!