Often obsolescence management is confined to availability of parts, but the issue of obsolescence management goes beyond. There are key issues related to it- design for the longest possible product life cycle, availability of electronic parts, skills to modify the product, product knowledge, system and domain, tools to modify the product and continuing Electronic Security and Support Issues. While the product is being designed it is important to identify the parts that pose the greatest obsolescence risk. Component Obsolescence Management has to be balanced against product features.

For example, opto-electronic displays (LCDs, OLEDs) commonly tend to become obsolete quickly despite big promises made by their vendors. The design phase will result in a list of parts that are at risk for obsolescence. A proactive approach must be taken to manage these at risk parts. This is possible only if the product is part of an expensive long life cycle product. An estimate is prepared for the requirement of at risk parts for the entire life cycle and these parts are procured. This is a costly process and it is important to correctly identify the risk parts and limit the procurement to them. It is also important to store the parts acquired properly. A less costly approach for handling at risk components is to do obsolescence tracking for them. For critical components, it is essential that the availability be proactively checked every month. Thus, you will want to buy enough components to make sure your product stays in production while your engineering team redesigns the product to not use the part about to go obsolete.