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A staggering 70% of respondents claim to have experienced problems due to one or more of three leading factors identified in the survey; obsolescence, lack of compatibility between products from different manufacturers and loss of data due to unreliable connectors. Independently, each of these leading factors affected 20-30% of those who took part in the study. Furthermore, these problems are all more likely to take effect the longer a product has been in circulation. As a result, Nexus believes that continued inappropriate use of consumer style memory products in industry could create a legacy of technical issues for forthcoming generations of design engineers to face.



“It’s bad enough if one of these factors affects your product when it’s launched or within a couple of years of it being in production,” explained managing director John Barrett. “However, it’s much worse if it comes into play further down the line when you might find that a complete re-design is required. This could be due to a combination of obsolescence with another factor such as changes in memory standards, for instance. This is where rectifying the issue can become really expensive. It’s far, far cheaper to start with a memory product, like our own, which is fit for purpose in the first instance.”



Over 28% of respondents agreed that using consumer memory had resulted in problems with obsolescence, while 23% said they had experienced issues with loss of data due to unreliable connectors. Incompatibility between products from different manufacturers created difficulties for 22% of respondents, while theft of the memory product itself has been a problem for 10% of the designers surveyed. Changing memory standards have surprisingly created few crises, perhaps because of the number of machines that are now built on a ‘fit and forget’ basis, with only 8.5% of participants claiming this had affected them.



“Although these are shocking figures I wouldn’t say we are surprised by them,” explained Nexus’ PR and marketing director Victoria Barrett. “Anecdotal evidence from our customer base over the years has turned up several examples of such issues de-railing OEM projects. One customer contacted us the day they launched their own product because on the same day they had received a letter from the memory manufacturer requesting a ‘last time buy’ order before production ceased!”



Nexus GB is the UK and Ireland exclusive distributor for US manufacturer Datakey Electronics’ range of portable, rugged keys and tokens containing non-volatile memory. These reliable and re-programmable items provide data transport, security, and access control solutions even in extreme environments where other methods, such as USB memory, would not survive. Furthermore, distinct from consumer-like memory solutions, they are a well established product that will not become obsolete as technology progresses. As a result, they are commonly used by design engineers working on long term projects, with more than three million units currently in UK service.



Nexus surveyed just under a hundred design engineers all of whom were working in a senior role in UK OEMs. The respondents were asked a series of non-leading multiple choice questions and the possible answers were displayed in random order with hundreds of potential combinations on each page.