Component level repair

[Jules Richardson]

William Donzelli wrote:
> In this case the bean counters are right - the component swap field
> service model just does not make economic sense anymore. It has not
> for, what, twenty years? In most electronic firms, component level
> swapping, especially at the board level, is not worth doing for most
> cases. The net result is the same - the systems get back up and
> running quickly, stay up and running, customer anger is minimized, and
> the repair costs are minimized.

I suspect that component-level repair will come back again, maybe ten to 
twenty years from now, as environmental issues of having to dispose of so much 
old equipment makes an impact.

At some point we'll probably see manufacturers made to dispose of broken 
consumer equipment at their own cost (similar to what's going to happen for 
car manufacturers and end of life vehicles, at least in Europe). For a few 
years they'll probably carry on just absorbing the cost of disposal, but at 
some point it's likely going to be more cost-effective to design the products 
to be more field-repairable in the first place.

Of course it could take another route and board/module/system swapping will be 
done in the field, with repairs then carried out at base before re-issue, but 
I certainly don't think manufacturers will be as inclined to build such 
wasteful systems in a couple of decades' time.

Environmental issues aside, certain far-east countries will not want to take 
western junk forever, and I can't imagine the sources of all this junk being 
too keen to process it on their own soil. Sooner or later there will 
(thankfully) be pressure on manufacturers to make their products be more 
maintainable and last for longer.

cheers

J.