ByteSnap Design has announced the launch of Obsolescence Management as a Service (OMaaS), a monthly subscription service providing continuous component lifecycle monitoring and strategic BOM [Bill of Materials] health management for manufacturing companies. The service will be highlighted at next week’s EDS on stand H52.
Unlike traditional reactive approaches to obsolescence, where manufacturers scramble to redesign products after components become unavailable, OMaaS provides proactive monitoring, impact assessment, and strategic recommendations before obsolescence events disrupt production.
“Technical directors tell us the same story repeatedly: their factory emails about component status changes, pulling engineers away from innovation to investigate whether a parts notification actually matters,” said Dunstan Power, Technical Director at ByteSnap Design. “Sometimes action is needed. Often, it’s noise. Either way, it consumes valuable technical leadership time that should be focused on next-generation development, not administrative parts checking.”
The obsolescence challenge facing UK manufacturers
Component and software obsolescence represents a persistent challenge for manufacturers supporting products with long lifecycles. Supply chain disruptions, discontinued parts, and unsupported platforms threaten production continuity – with manufacturers typically spending 5-15 engineering hours monthly per product investigating component alerts and supplier notifications.
For companies who’ve experienced key technical staff turnover or lack dedicated production resources, the problem intensifies. Product knowledge lives in people’s heads, and when those people leave or get stretched thin, component decisions slow down or get missed entirely until parts become genuinely unavailable.
How OMaaS works
ByteSnap’s service operates through a three-stage subscription model:
Stage 1: product understanding – ByteSnap’s engineering team reviews customers’ schematics and BOMs to understand component relationships, criticality, and potential risks, then prepares a monthly monitoring quote based on component count and complexity.
Stage 2: continuous component tracking – customer BOMs are loaded into ByteSnap’s component tracking system with alerts configured for lifecycle status changes. Supply chain relationships with major distributors provide early visibility into component availability shifts.
Stage 3: impact assessment and recommendations – when component status changes, ByteSnap assesses impact against specific designs, researches alternative parts, and market stock availability, then provides strategic recommendations – only contacting customers when decisions or actions are genuinely required.
“We don’t just forward notifications,” Power explained. “We assess impact and recommend action only when customers’ expertise is needed. Minor equivalent changes that don’t affect designs? We handle it internally. Critical parts requiring board respins? Customers receive detailed assessments with options and cost implications. It’s about filtering signal from noise so technical directors can focus on strategic work.”
Proven approach built on 17 years’ experience
Since 2008, ByteSnap has helped UK manufacturers navigate component lifecycles, supply chain disruptions, and manufacturer transitions across hundreds of embedded electronics projects. The OMaaS service formalises this expertise into a structured subscription offering.
“This is fundamentally about moving from reactive crisis management to proactive strategic oversight,” said Power. “It’s calm, predictable, drama-free BOM management – not the panicking and running around that typically characterises obsolescence response. For companies stretched thin or lacking dedicated production resources, outsourcing this administrative burden makes strategic sense.”
Service details
OMaaS operates as a month-to-month subscription with no long-term contracts required. Monthly monitoring fees are quoted based on product complexity and component count. Redesign work – such as PCB layout changes, firmware porting, or compliance support – is quoted separately as project-based work, with customers free to use ByteSnap or alternative providers for implementation.
The service suits technical directors managing multiple products without dedicated production resources, companies who’ve experienced key staff turnover, engineering teams stretched too thin for administrative component tracking, and organisations seeking preventative rather than reactive obsolescence management.
Industry recognition and credentials
ByteSnap Design holds ISO 9001:2015 certification and maintains longstanding partnerships with major semiconductor vendors and distributors including Arrow, DigiKey, Solsta, NXP, Microchip, Silicon Labs, and STMicroelectronics. The Birmingham-based consultancy employs 40 hardware and software engineers with over 400 cumulative years of electronics design experience.
“We’ve invested in tools and processes specifically for component lifecycle monitoring – capabilities most manufacturers can’t justify building internally,” Power noted. “Our goal is simple: help technical directors protect their products’ viability whilst freeing their teams for the innovation work that actually grows their businesses.”
Dunstan Power, Director at ByteSnap Design will also be speaking at the event at on 8th October in a session entitled ‘Breaking the Reactive Cycle: Strategic Approaches to Component Obsolescence Management’; and is also a panellist on supply chain forum on 9th October. The panel will discuss supply chain security and resilience in the age of tariffs and moving goal posts.
