Device lifecycle

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Lifecycle means series of stages which something (services, products, ..) passes during its lifetime.

This article is aimed primarily for physical products at the moment.

Standard product lifecycle consists of multiple phases from manufacturer's perspective:

1. Conceive
2. Design, prototype & validate
3. Realise
   1. Introduce to markets
   2. Growth phase (sales increase)
   3. Maturity phase (sales flatten)
   4. Decline phase (sales decline)
4. End of life

And similar lifecycle model modified to consumer's perspective:

1. Purchase
2. Useful life
   1. Repairs, modifications
3. End of life
   1. Repairs not possible/viable

How decisions in different phases affect the product

Design

Lifecycle costs are defined primarily during design phase. The impact estimates vary but are usually around 80% probably by reference to Pareto principle.

During design phase it is the easiest to affect end result by setting specific goals to end product. For example aiming for thin product instead of relatively thin and easily repairable. The actual differences are usually relatively insignificant.

If you want to hear comments from person being involved in design processes, you should check out for example video by Design Theory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrv45bvP8qo

Other thing playing significant role is spare part availability and general reliability. Are standardised easy to get components being prioritised in the design. Are the designs based on known good reference designs that might lack some performance for example.

Useful life

At least some products have repeating redesign rounds when they are being in active production. Some component availability might change and replacements are needed. Or management deems incoming warranty cases too infrequent and they see opportunity to cut BOM costs. As seen in official comment from Milwaukee Tools:

Products can change several times within their lifetime for a variety of reasons, but the goal is always to exceed the users’ expectations. This time we clearly did not hit the mark.

One hearsay is that first version of a product are the sturdiest and follow prudent design guidelines to minimise risks for need to expensive recall campaigns and unexpected increases in Costs Of Goods Sold. When manufacturer has known good baseline that does not get too much warranty cases, they can start redesigning internal components while everything looks the same for consumers.

Tracking such internal revisions are practically impossible. See some reasons from the next chapter. From consumer's perspective these are either unknown unknowns or known unknowns when looking things through Rumsfeld Matrix.

And the ultimate decision during useful life is the End Of Life (EOL) announcement.

Why understanding the concept is important

Things described in this chapter are hard to confirm because usually everyone working with any products have strict Non-Disclosure Agreements. And any written documentation are trade secrets.

Understanding different lifecycle phases and concepts might make it easier to identify different strategies and practices that manufacturers can use to control the lifecycle.

It might also help estimate Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) more accurately. Majority of manufacturer adjustments to it's products work in a specific way. People make purchase decisions based on past performance/track record and thus might assume too optimistic useful life duration. Manufacturers benefit significantly from the asymmetric information when consumers get the information only when it is already too late. This leads to higher than initially expected TCO.

It is paradoxical that the manufacturers or their contract manufacturers in general keep a keen eye for factory equipment useful life with other metrics and at the same time cannibalise the useful life of their end products.

General strategies for manufacturers to control lifecycle

Manufacturers have multiple ways to control device lifecycles. The list is not exhaustive. And multiple items from the list might be applicable at the same time.

1. Spare parts not available at all
   • Non-OEM spares might still be available but using them is always risky
2. Spare parts available, but with relatively high price compared to new product
   • Cost of repair and spare part might be higher than new product
3. Spare parts available, but in larger subassemblies/modules
   • See for example Bundle pricing but with a twist that you need only one single component
4. Spare parts are serialised and require pairing programmatically or device does not work properly
   • Manufacturer can deny third party programming equipment and threaten to sue in case someone tries to circumvent the protection
5. Lock the product remotely or use any other way to prevent using it
   • Just come up with any reason and pull the plug