It’s a familiar story: A few years into the development of your latest product it has already passed all the tests and received all the necessary approvals. Now just before you press the button to begin series production a message pops up telling you that some vital component used in the design is now obsolete. Do you put the news down to bad luck, an unfortunate coincidence or has someone in the development or procurement department been sleeping on the job? It’s not possible to give a 100% guarantee against individual hardware or software components being made obsolete but with the correct preparation you can to some extent mitigate the risks and minimize its consequences.