Glossary
Parts harvesting
Recovering working components from devices that cannot be economically repaired, to supply the repair of others.
When a device is beyond economic repair, its working components rarely are. Harvesting recovers screens, batteries, boards, cameras and connectors from those units and returns them to stock as spare parts.
This matters more than it first appears, because spare-parts availability is one of the hard constraints on repair yield. For older models in particular, manufacturer supply thins out or disappears, and harvested parts become the only realistic source. An operation that harvests systematically can keep repairing devices long after new parts stop being available.
It only works with inventory discipline. A harvested part has to be tested, identified, graded and stocked against the models it fits, or it becomes a drawer of components nobody trusts. The same traceability that follows a device through repair has to follow the parts that come out of it.