The modern world runs on electronic systems that are designed to last many years. Tons of natural resources are carved out every day to produce semiconductor chips and other components. These will eventually be mounted on printed circuit boards (PCB) and will effectively become the brain of most pieces of industrial technology. These expensive circuit board assemblies are used in industrial applications to help control our vehicles, production machinery, airplanes, wind turbines, and so on. Typically costing from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, they are ultimately used to manage power, safety systems, monitoring devices, quality checks, and many other functions.

The problem is that, over time, the components that make up these circuit boards get tired and die. Software “upgrades” can also slow down or otherwise affect their functioning.