Purpose: The purpose of this document is to establish guidelines that should be observed during initial design, production and maintenance of avionics LRUs, and to present shortterm and long-term strategies to minimize the costs and impacts associated with decreasing availability of electronic components.

The aerospace industry depends on electronic components, but can no longer assume long-term availability. There is a need to design, produce and support avionics with components produced for consumer electronics that are characterized by short life cycles.

The goals of this report are to:

•Provide guidelines for avionics designs that will be tolerant of component obsolescence.

•Identify cost effective methods for resolving component obsolescence issues.

•Recommend the use of standardized components for avionics.

•Facilitate information exchange, e.g., obsolescence solutions, databases, etc.

•Establish maintenance operation and support processes to address obsolescence.

Refer to the glossary in Attachment 1 for definitions and terms.