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[Kristian Stevenson]

Hello all. My team and I are working on creating a life cycle plan for the more "mission critical" gear in our inventory. I have talked briefly with associates in the IT field and it seems that their life cycle models would not be cost effective or particularly necessary for longer lasting, higher cost, professional AVL gear. So my question is how do you manage life cycle on gear like consoles, projectors, PA, ect.

I have read Mike Sessler's article on H.O.W. life cycle and everything makes sense but I'm just curious as to how YOU justify when a big ticket item is "end of life" and how you track this.

[Chris Hindle]

Generally, when your gear is no longer on the riders you get, it's EOL.
Sucks, because with a bit of maintenance it still does the job you bought it for.
Upgrade to keep up, or fall by the wayside. Expensive choices.....
Chris.

edited: kant spull..

[Mark McFarlane]

What kind of business do you have?  How large is your inventory? e.g. $200,000, $10,000,000

Me, I work in the low end. I keep gear until it doesn't make money (collecting dust), becomes redundant and isn't likely to make money, or until repair costs become problematic.

[Justice C. Bigler]

Here at the City of Tulsa, we run it until it breaks, then throw it away and get a new one. That includes gear and people.

[Ivan Beaver]

Here at the City of Tulsa, we run it until it breaks, then throw it away and get a new one. That includes gear and people.

Like the old saying  "If you fall off of scaffolding you are FIRED the moment you start to fall-that way we can say -He didn't work for us-at the time he hit the ground"-------------

[Kristian Stevenson]

What kind of business do you have?  How large is your inventory? e.g. $200,000, $10,000,000

Not a business really, I work for an in-house university production company. We aren't extremely concerned about rider specification, mainly about our own usability. For a university production department, I'd say we have a pretty large inventory for audio (Vertec, Meyer), lighting (MA2, Varilite, ETC), and full HD broadcast production suite. We support most everything in-house, occasionally renting a larger PA for large concerts.

Here's a scenario I'm dealing with right now. We have 2 PM5D's (FOH & MON). They are setup 3 times a week in a tour fashion in our basketball arena for our convocation services. They were purchased used about 8 years ago and are starting to show their age (slowing down, sticky faders). We run a mixture of Avioms and 4 PSM900 systems for in-ear monitoring and a few wedge mixes. This has us maxed out on output buses in monitor world. We have maxed the input side of them a few times as well. My problem is justifying replacement when they technically still work, are still in production from Yamaha, and  mostly meet our needs.

In this scenario, the plan right now is to get a replacement quote (looking at Digico) and present this information (along with a life-cycle scenario) to budgeting. Just want to make sure I have all my ducks in a row and create some sort of standard for product life-cycle.

[Michael Elphinstone]

Hello all. My team and I are working on creating a life cycle plan for the more "mission critical" gear in our inventory. I have talked briefly with associates in the IT field and it seems that their life cycle models would not be cost effective or particularly necessary for longer lasting, higher cost, professional AVL gear. So my question is how do you manage life cycle on gear like consoles, projectors, PA, ect.

My day job is IT/AV Management and I look at both assets the same way. You might be surprised that a beefy IT systems environment can cost as much as a beefy FOH system. An IT system may only have a usable life of 4 years, whilst an AV system may last up to twice as long. The question for us comes down to asset finance, renewal and disposal. If we can get the most out of an IT asset during the leasing/finance period, we'll then ship it back to the financier and get a new one. I use a similar principle with AV - finance over 4-5 years and reassess at the end of that period. If the numbers add up, if you can still add value using the gear, do it. If not, return and replace with new gear. With current product life cycles becoming shorter, I believe that hanging on to old gear, especially in digital world, will become a thing of the past.

That's just my thoughts.

[Richard Turner]

on the PM5D, Is it still Yamaha's intent to offer service and support 5 years past official discontinue date?

I believe that is a far cry better then most other manufacturers.

As for the FOH  audio It likely will do what it was designed to do for a decade or more but at a certain point people will start specking newer stuff, Yet there are still people who would take a 20+ year old EAW KF rig over insert name here midlevel contant curve array.

Its all the small stuff that gets burned through is it not? Wireless input gear, stage monitors and in ear monitor,

Video seems to have a much shorter product generation, Are all your systems capable at 1080p? when will 4K be minimum requirement?

At a certain point every dog has its day How unfriendly has having the PM5 become? Are people refusing to use it? Is the AVID current offering exactly what is needed or should you tough it out and wait for their next generation product and then be ahead of the curve by being an early adopter and hoping there are few issues along the way?

Generally 60 month long term rentals had been common place as lease arrangments, as the leassee got new stuff for an agreeable fee and didnt have the capital tied up and the leassor, was paid a premium for the new product and had something reasonably salable at 5 years old but now with all digital everything, Who knows if that model holds? Or would 36 months be more realistic with the short product lifespans.

[Scott Helmke]

As a mostly rental house that does some shows, we use our rental software to also keep track of what is and isn't being used on a regular basis. Aside from special pieces of gear for a specific gig, everything else has to earn its upkeep. But anything that is being used gets maintained to be 100% functional and reasonably good looking too.

Gear that isn't being used gets sold.

[Kristian Stevenson]

That's just my thoughts.

Nice insight there. One of my guys brought up leasing over a period of time vs buying. I'd be interested to see the cost matrix on that long term. Definitely could stay on the leading edge of new tech that way. In the 5D scenario, Digico was offering a trade in program for older consoles (as of this past June). I'm taking that into consideration as that could offset the cost a little.

Generally 60 month long term rentals had been common place as lease arrangments...

That seems like something to look into for the next go-around of audio consoles. Currently, most outside gigs bring in their own consoles as they are usually part of a tour and only a few that weren't on tour have elected to use our 5D's over the past few years. My guys have no problem with the 5D's since we are mainly a Yamaha campus. However, they are showing their age and we have recently reached their full potential.

On the video side of things, the broadcast equipment is handled by a different department on campus. The inventory I'm over includes large and small mobile IMAG projection rigs (DP projection, NEC displays). All of this being 1080p and in good working order.

We are almost finished swapping out our older, "B" level ULX-S wireless for ULX-D for its high density mode. Our "A" wireless rack houses 12 channels of UHF-R and some PSM900 units. We have hundreds of RF channels on campus packed in a narrow, 1/2 mile span of land so wireless coordination is a top priority for both the IT (who takes care of all in-house installations) and live production departments.

Thank you everyone for the input! I'll add what I've gathered here to my discussions back at the office.

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