What responsibility does a manufacturer have for their products, and what should they do about items that are coming to the end of their life (EOL)?
In motion control, and especially when you’re talking about the Indramat motion control from Rexroth Bosch which is our specialty, you often have drives or controllers or motors that are hanging around for decades in machines that are still under warranty.
Take one side, and you have a Rexroth-Bosch rep responding to a question about a piece of equipment that’s older than he is. Is he going to show you his shiny new upgrade? You know it.
Take the other side, and you have a machine that costs thousands of dollars a minute every time it has to be shut down. Upgrading certainly means shutting down, and it also carries the danger of creating compatibility problems with parts that are still in great condition.
We’re not saying you should never upgrade. We’re saying you should consider your options:
- Acquire some extra parts while the aquiring’s good. Some legacy parts are still stocked and some are still available if you know where to look. First step: call us at 479-422-0390. The problem here is the money and space tied up in replacement parts you don’t yet need.
- Put that number some place where you can find it easily when you have trouble. We have emergency replacement units as well as factory refurbished Indramat drives, controls, and servos on the shelf. When you don’t want to build up a supply of extras, using ours is a great alternative.
- Leave everything to chance. Knowing that legacy units will not be available forever and that Rexroth doesn’t sell parts to third party repair shops, we can’t recommend this option.
It isn’t realistic to expect companies to support their products in perpetuity. We just have to have some plans in place.