Managing end-of-life (EOL) parts, including finding appropriate alternatives, will likely always be a thorn in the side of electronics buyers.

Suppliers will always have an "out with the old in with the new" mentality when it comes to electronic components. The problem for buyers is getting early enough warning about parts that won't be produced anymore. Many buyers may overlook the resources and services that distributors can provide for parts that are going end of life.

While distributors charge for some of the more sophisticated EOL services, others are free if parts have been purchased from the distributor.

"For all customers we have electronic part change notification," says Brian McNally, president of global alliance and supply chain for Arrow Global Components based in Melville, N.Y. "There is no charge and it is on all of the parts that customers have purchased from us within the past 12 months."

He says a buyer is notified via e-mail when an EOL notice is issued. The notification will have the customer part number and the distributor and supplier part numbers. It also has cross-reference parts.

"The buyer then decides what needs to be done," McNally says, adding that buyers aren't just notified about EOL notices. "A number of things can happen to a part, the worst of which is that it goes EOL."

Sometimes a component manufacturer will change the status of a part to noncancellable and nonreturnable. Other times a manufacturer will issue a notice telling distributors the part should not be used in new designs although it is still being made and can be purchased for equipment in production.

Sometimes a part will go EOL, but then the supplier will reverse the decision and start making the part again, so an EOL reversal notice will go out, says McNally. "There are millions of devices out there and lots of things can happen to them for a variety of reasons. We are looking for all status changes," he says.

Arrow also offers more intensive EOL services through its subscription service called Arrow Collaborator. With the tool, buyers send a list of parts to be monitored. "We provide all of the notifications and give customers the lifecycle status of the parts," he says.

Arrow monitors the lifecycle status of many components. For instance with an Intel processor dual-core processor, there are various stages of lifecycle, McNally says. There are functional samples and three to six months after that, the parts will be in production. Then there is the peak production stage. Six months after that production winds down and the part is obsolete after about 24 months. Buyers are notified when the part moves into a different stage of its lifecycle.

Arrow has another tool called Arrow Alert which provides status changes of 27 million parts. "We cover most of the distributor total available market," says McNally.

Of course Arrow isn't the only distributor with EOL tools and services. Avnet also notifies buyers of part status changes of components purchased. Avnet’s Promiere service allows buyers to monitor the status of parts no matter where the parts were purchased, says Glenn Bassett, vice president of strategic business development for Avnet, based in Phoenix.

"Promiere allows customers to provide us with a list of parts they want monitored, whether they bought them from us or someone else," Bassett says. "And that process will alert them of EOL notices and enable them to cross-reference on their own if they want to manage it," he says.

Promiere is especially useful to buyers whose companies have long lifecycle equipment that may be in the field for years. Buyers may need to keep track of a bill of materials for 10 years.

Bassett says the company may not have purchased the parts for years, but the status of parts needs to be monitored because equipment may still be in the field. He says the original focus of Promiere was defense contractors, telecom and medical and aviation OEMs because those industries produce equipment with long lifecycles.

However, since 2001 there has been a reduction in the number of specialists in purchasing and engineering who had managed the component EOL problems at other companies such as computer and consumer electronics OEMs. "What we have seen is that commercial companies also have the need for data on the status of parts," he says.