Obsolescence management practices overview in Automotive Industry

Obsolescence and its consequences are becoming a common phenomenon in our daily lives. Obsolescence seems to be inevitable and businesses and consumers must learn to deal with it. The current and real transition to electric vehicles promises a dramatic impact of obsolescence on the automotive industry, especially due to the dependence on large numbers of electronic components. Among other sectors, the automotive industry is facing and will increasingly face obsolescence in the coming years and decades, mainly due to the massive introduction of electronic devices and distributed computer programs in almost all major functions of cars, such as infotainment, engine control or safety. Nevertheless, by browsing through the literature, we have discovered that the problems related to obsolescence are not studied in depth in view of the future (r)evolutions of the car industry. The aim of this document is to draw the attention of the scientific community to this subject by first presenting a documented reminder of what obsolescence is, and then an analysis of today's practices of its management in the automotive sector. Although studied for the automotive sector, the proposed lines of analysis remain generic and useful for the development of methodological approaches to proactive and strategic management of obsolescence for other industrial sectors, whether mass, batch or one-off production.