Every plant has a machine everyone quietly worries about. An obsolescence audit converts that anxiety into a list with dates and prices — which is the only form management can act on.
What the audit records
Per machine: lifecycle state of each control component (active / phase-out / discontinued-with-spares / extinct — vendor lifecycle databases plus the gray-market reality), spares depth (what is on the shelf, what the market still yields, at what price trend), software custody (do we hold current archives, passwords, license media — the audit that finds “the program lives only in the CPU” pays for itself on the spot), knowledge concentration (which systems only Mehmet understands — single points of knowledge are obsolescence too), and failure consequence (hours of downtime per failure, per season).
Score the combination and the portfolio sorts itself: extinct controls + thin spares + high consequence = the top of the plan; discontinued-but-stocked + low consequence = watchlist with a review date.
From audit to plan
The output is a phased roadmap synchronized with maintenance windows and budgets: this year’s retrofits, next year’s staged migrations, bridge measures for the waiting list (refurbished spares purchases while the market still has them, program archives completed, cross-training against the Mehmet risk). Re-run the audit yearly — lifecycle states move, and the plan that isn’t refreshed quietly rots back into anxiety.
FAQ
How long for a mid-size plant? Days of walking and archive work per production area — mostly interviews and panel photography; the scoring is fast once the inventory is honest.
Who should own the result? Maintenance management with finance in the room — the audit’s power is exactly that it speaks both languages.
Zone Otomasyon runs obsolescence audits that end in plans, not just spreadsheets. Book one before summer.