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The team from Force Technologies will be discussing all things obsolescence amongst themselves and with a mix of special guests from the industry.
00:00:16:10 - 00:00:35:17
Charlotte
Hi. Welcome back to another force Tech Talk. So one of the previous podcasts we did previously, we did a roundtable because we had questions sent in. So it went down really well. So we thought we'll get the team same team back to do another one and maybe just lucky did pass the background. Okay.
00:00:35:20 - 00:00:36:21
Karen
Let's see what.
00:00:36:23 - 00:00:42:18
Charlotte
Let's see what comes up. So add a layer to.
00:00:42:20 - 00:00:46:09
Karen
So I might be annoyed with him if he gets a really bad question.
00:00:46:11 - 00:00:46:23
Charlotte
Oh wow.
00:00:46:23 - 00:00:51:29
Eder
Nice is the question in front of the camera. Do you.
00:00:52:01 - 00:00:53:26
Charlotte
Get.
00:00:53:29 - 00:01:15:21
Eder
I am being offered a last time by, but it will leave me with a lot of inventory. I don't like this word inventory. Should I buy all the stock I can or just some of this stock to tide up over for a few years and aim to redesign or for a redesign?
00:01:15:23 - 00:01:31:17
Charlotte
I feel like we would have different answers to this because from my point of view, I want to say, if you've got it and you can, you can get the budget for it. Just take it, just take it. Try and get a really good idea of what you're going to need, not just for the next few years, but as long as possible.
00:01:31:17 - 00:01:42:07
Charlotte
And just just take it, just take it and store it with I mean, we have storage there. You know, you can do two things with it. I think just if you've got the option, take it.
00:01:42:09 - 00:02:02:28
Eder
Yeah, definitely something I learned working for for us. And we mentioned this on the last conversation we had yesterday. My mindset say inventory is a waste, but, understanding the business better now I understand that that is unavoidable. And yeah, that's the best way to protect and prevent, for the risks in my mind.
00:02:03:03 - 00:02:06:06
Charlotte
Yeah, yeah, it's just industry work and it's just. Yeah.
00:02:06:09 - 00:02:43:26
Karen
Having said that, if you go out to the problem with End of Life is that prices tend to go up. So I think what you need to do is work out what the cost of it is for, because it costs may be way too heavy, too. And if you know the part's going to sit and you've got some time for your next production, I would say buy enough to last a few months for production and then speak to somebody like us or another solution provider to put a, you know, a forced form fit function and buy it level, and store at that level, which is also what we do so that you it's not
00:02:43:26 - 00:03:09:27
Karen
so much so costly for you because cost is a big inhibitor. You as I say, manufacturers as much as they disagree with me. And I'm sure you'll get again feedback on this one. But they do put the prices up. Yeah. End of life. Everybody wants it. Happy days kitchen coaching. Yeah okay. So I think if cost is going to be prohibitive for you as a customer, look at a solution before you commit is my answer to that.
00:03:10:03 - 00:03:47:01
Charlotte
By yeah. Yeah. So it always comes down to budget. Oh. How can procurement be involved earlier in forecasting obsolescence rather than having to react to issues? I think yeah, this is going back to previous conversations we've had about some some people have a really, really clear idea of it because of their own customer and their forecasting. And so I'm just so of flying dark and they really even if they ask the question, they don't get the answer.
00:03:47:03 - 00:03:51:24
Charlotte
But how can they be involved early in forecast forecasting, obsolescence is.
00:03:51:27 - 00:04:12:21
Ben
It's I mean, there's a lot of really good tools out there. Yeah. The, the allow you to, you know, just upload your entire memo and CDs from our Excel format or whatever you go, and they will just do a full suite of all those part numbers and then that those companies are, you know, feeding back constantly and getting and requesting feedback from manufacturers.
00:04:12:21 - 00:04:27:13
Ben
And we even get requests ourselves on, on our parts to see if our stuff's on active. And, you know, where if we're an aftermarket manufacturer. So they do a very good job. A lot of those companies. And if you sign up to that, yeah, they're, they're X amount per year.
00:04:27:16 - 00:04:28:21
Karen
That's a really good quality time.
00:04:28:23 - 00:04:51:08
Ben
Yeah. They're fantastic. And they do. They take on all the end of life notifications. They take on product, discontinue applications, they take on change notifications as well. So they often you get a whole bunch of information there. I think that that forms a really the backbone of your obsolescence because then you can see that, alright, we can have a problem in a couple of years on this part.
00:04:51:09 - 00:05:12:15
Ben
Okay. Well, the rest of the time a bit more about that. And then really key into that stuff early. So then you know, you know not just yeah I mean so engineering have the time to review it and make sure that there is a good solution in place and then pass the information to procurement so that the government, you know, get a really good gauge.
00:05:12:18 - 00:05:20:12
Ben
Yeah. To know exactly when, you know, then they can start reviewing or how much is this replacement, how much should I how how much are we going to have to buy and all that kind of thing.
00:05:20:12 - 00:05:32:06
Charlotte
So yeah. Yeah the early the better for sure. But yeah, I mean you might miss some but you know accuracy parts intelligence said to Silicon next where there's so many to do really really good services on that say.
00:05:32:08 - 00:05:35:15
Karen
All available I international. So yeah this.
00:05:35:18 - 00:05:36:09
Charlotte
Is a small.
00:05:36:09 - 00:05:37:06
Eder
Piece.
00:05:37:08 - 00:05:39:12
Karen
Small piece of my PCM piece.
00:05:39:15 - 00:05:50:21
Ben
And yeah that was fantastic as well. Is redesigning the right response to obsolescence or should I be looking to use a different solution or.
00:05:50:23 - 00:06:08:07
Charlotte
I would always, yeah. Just from my point of view, you just pump the brakes before you go full into a redesign. I think you have so many other options before you go down that route, because it takes so much time, so much money to check out so many things on the back end.
00:06:08:07 - 00:06:26:00
Ben
I think it really comes down to the for me, I mean, you know, we mercifully, we're not in a situation where we're having to monitor that many, you know, hundreds and hundreds of parts on a, on a critical Bom for multimillion pound dollar product or whatever it is. But yeah, I mean, it's a, an unenviable position to be in.
00:06:26:03 - 00:06:41:29
Ben
But I think, you know, once you see that, you know, you've got ten, 15, 20 different parts that are all going after. Yeah. You know, at that point I would say, oh, how do I redesign this thing? So then it's an it's a nightmare trying to redesign any kind of product in that kind of environment.
00:06:42:01 - 00:06:46:15
Karen
But then focusing on your board has gone obviously I've done a very good job. Have you? I mean, let's be fair.
00:06:46:20 - 00:06:48:04
Ben
Wow. Yeah. You.
00:06:48:04 - 00:06:53:17
Karen
So you haven't design for obsolescence. I mean, that's the other thing. Well, yeah. Designed for obsolescence.
00:06:53:20 - 00:06:59:00
Charlotte
Yeah. I think is becoming more and more of a thing like designing for obsolescence is being pushed a lot more.
00:06:59:00 - 00:07:23:14
Karen
And then you get caught out and you. Oh. Can I come for a visit? Oh, yeah. Of course. We are in the process of. We've got a lot of building work going on with our expansion. But certainly we welcome all customers, all of our friends in the industry of welcome to come and visit us.
00:07:23:16 - 00:07:37:00
Karen
We even had, our local MP visit us quite recently. He came very interested in what we were doing, so. Yeah. Just get in touch with, with any one of the team and and pop in and. No problem, can I?
00:07:37:01 - 00:07:37:20
Eder
I think.
00:07:37:21 - 00:07:39:09
Karen
We can.
00:07:39:11 - 00:07:46:12
Eder
It's my dream personal thing. Yeah. To make Force Technologies a lean model of company.
00:07:46:12 - 00:07:47:19
Karen
So only one visitor at a time.
00:07:47:19 - 00:08:01:15
Eder
No, I want you have visitors. My dream. My personal dream. Never talked to her about this, but it's. I want you to have visitors every week. People coming from the other parts of the world to learn from this. That's my personal dream. And we working on it.
00:08:01:15 - 00:08:03:13
Karen
We are working on it. We sent. Yeah.
00:08:03:13 - 00:08:17:04
Charlotte
To get go. I think from my point of view. Yeah. Any customer wants to come in always welcome.
00:08:17:06 - 00:08:52:11
Eder
How do you ensure traceability when sourcing hard to find or lifetime buy components? Sorry my reading, but, I think, as a quality engineer, traceability is the first place we focus. We, we prioritize paperwork. But there, there will be situations that paperwork is not available. That's where I learned from Ben already at some point that there will be tests and then can expand a lot more.
00:08:52:14 - 00:09:03:25
Eder
There will be test that will identify that if the part is a counterfeit. No, if the parts meet the requirements. Not sure if you want to find out. It's a bit,
00:09:03:27 - 00:09:27:03
Ben
Yeah. I mean, I think, how do you ensure. I mean, if you buy from the buy from traceable sources where you can, there's massive pitfalls, unfortunately, because in the semiconductor world, for example, sell like you're buying dies. The original commercial a lot of the a lot of the dies and even the high end, high reliability semiconductors use the same base die.
00:09:27:05 - 00:09:43:04
Ben
And whether or not you were buying it from the original manufacturer as a commercial, industrial or military temperature graded compiler, it's generally all the same die, but on the sort of lower end of that on the come my way, if you're buying in a commercial way for you, they didn't really give you a backing that I.
00:09:43:06 - 00:09:46:28
Karen
Never got cases. So, you know, when I worked for up my let me whenever go.
00:09:47:01 - 00:10:11:23
Ben
So you've got maybe a packing list to go back to and then, you know, it's, not for the customer in terms of the person behind buying that in size of this packing, though, enough to show like a chain of traceability back from over a franchise distributor for that product. So, you know, it's it's it's, it's a tough world, I think really you just get as much as you can make sure if that's that's enough for the project.
00:10:11:23 - 00:10:15:07
Ben
And if you can't get the full blown CFC.
00:10:15:09 - 00:10:32:12
Karen
Sometimes isn't it? I remember sponge used to send out their die, just to pack in the, the, the batch number on it. But they had a separate queue for work trying to work out the batch number and, and how you know which factory you had to know. You had to know the code. Yeah. To work.
00:10:32:12 - 00:10:39:01
Karen
Yeah. But okay, the x axis from this factory, and this means it's dispatch and there's something there, and it's really, really complicated.
00:10:39:04 - 00:10:39:25
Ben
00:10:39:27 - 00:10:43:19
Karen
But because sometimes the actual packing is not enough. So.
00:10:43:22 - 00:10:44:14
Ben
No.
00:10:44:17 - 00:10:47:10
Karen
No, no aerospace industry. That's just not acceptable.
00:10:47:13 - 00:10:55:19
Charlotte
Because there was a paper copy back in the day and, you know, the logistics of the warehouse get it in. And they, you know, they didn't scan it. They didn't realize how important that paperwork is.
00:10:55:23 - 00:11:16:13
Ben
I think that's a that's a really important point is, yeah. Document retention is is is huge. Like, you know, it's not just ensuring, you know, it's not just ensuring when you buy it and it's, as you say, ensuring down the line when you actually go to build from it 5 or 10 years later that someone has thrown that bit of paper away when it came into the logistics place in a hotel, stores or whatever.
00:11:16:13 - 00:11:22:02
Karen
You see, you're always moaning me that I have boxes and boxes of paper and, but it's for very good reason.
00:11:22:05 - 00:11:25:09
Eder
It was important to some point. Yeah.
00:11:25:11 - 00:11:31:16
Karen
You know, archive in warehouse, with paperwork, but it's it is. And we have been asked recently to dig out some.
00:11:31:16 - 00:11:35:15
Ben
The paperwork,
00:11:35:18 - 00:11:36:06
Karen
Paperwork.
00:11:36:06 - 00:11:37:21
Ben
So,
00:11:37:24 - 00:11:51:08
Charlotte
It is important. I think it's also knowing your customer what they're going to be, what's acceptable to them, and what they can accept, what they can't accept, and traceability. And you don't want to get in a situation where someone's made really good investments and then haven't got the traceability to back up.
00:11:51:08 - 00:12:16:13
Karen
So it's that's why I mean, you've got process, you when we get something into our long term storage, it goes through a process. Yeah. And to make sure that we have everything in place before restore it documentation. If it's not always up, you have to make sure we store it when we've had one recently where one batch had a paper and one didn't know we had to go back to customs, say, I'm happy to store it, but you've only got three batches to have got same, same one hasn't.
00:12:16:13 - 00:12:20:22
Karen
What do you want us to do? So I know you've got process. Yeah.
00:12:20:24 - 00:12:21:05
Charlotte
I just do a.
00:12:21:05 - 00:12:24:13
Karen
Process for every customs.
00:12:24:16 - 00:12:36:00
Charlotte
All right I think. Yeah we'll we'll stop it there if, if everyone's happy. But. Yeah. Thank you very much for joining us for another force tech talk and yeah maybe do another one of these again. Who knows. But thank you for joining.