Chris Johnson, Index
The Basics: Hardware Management
Some consequences of designing equipment without a PPL are:
- Proliferation of non-preferred parts and materials with identical
functions
- Increased need for development and preparation of engineering
justification for
new parts and materials
- Increased need for monitoring suppliers and inspecting/screening
parts and materials
- Selection of obsolete (or potentially obsolete) and sole-sourced
parts and materials
- Possibility of diminishing sources
- Use of unproven or exotic technology ("beyond" state-of-the-art)
- Incompatibility with the manufacturing process
- Inventory volume expansion and cost increases
- Increasing supplier base and audit requirements
- Loss of "ship-to-stock" or "just-in-time" purchase opportunities
- Limited ability to benefit from volume buys
- Increased cost and schedule delays
- Nonavailability of reliability data
- Additional tooling and assembly methods may be required to account
for the added
variation in part characteristics
- Decreased part reliability due to the uncertainty and lack of
experience with new parts
- Impeded automation efforts due to the added variability of part
types
- Difficulty in monitoring vendor quality due to the added number of
suppliers
- More difficult and expensive logistics support due to the increased
number of part
types that must be spared.