End of Life Policy

 
Background
 

There is an essential requirement from customers commercialising Xaar-based inkjet solutions to secure continuity of supply. To this end Xaar's customers are looking for written commitments to supply product for several years.

There are various reasons a product reaches the end of its Product Life Cycle. Market demand, technology innovation, withdrawal of 3rd party components and ongoing development all drive change to existing products and the development of new replacement products.

This document defines our policy which in turn helps our customers manage their own End-of-Life programmes.

Our over-riding goal is to exceed the timescales laid out in this document wherever practical and possible i.e. to support our customers' profitable product sales as long as possible.

---

End of Life (EOL) - What does it mean?
 

There are 4 phases in the product life-cycle that relate to End of Life (EOL). For clarity these are defined below:

Product Introduction and Lifetime

In addition to the below Xaar can commit to Product Lifetime for Xaar-manufactured products. This is deemed to be a minimum of 7 years from Product Introduction. Product Introduction is defined as the date of the first commercial shipment following the successful completion of field or beta trials. Some product variants within a product family may have a life less than this if they can be directly replaced by another variant. In addition some product variants may have a life longer than 7 years if sales demand remains.

This applies to all printhead sub-assemblies, fittings/fixtures and related documentation.

For all Peripherals i.e. primarily 3rd party manufactured products, the Product Lifetime will be 3 years from introduction. This includes Drive Electronics and Ink Supply Systems.

End of Sale (EOS)

Product is withdrawn from the price book and will not be sold to any new customers. This would typically be communicated to existing customers as part of the statement that the product is entering EOL and what that means. There will be a minimum of 2 years between EOS announcement and EOL. Following the announcement of EOS customers will be offered the opportunity to make a last-time-buy to be supplied no later than the EOL date. Support activity continues but there will be no further hardware or software development of the product.

End of Life (EOL)

All manufacturing activity stops. The timing of this will be subject to materials availability/lead-times and manufacturing capacity. This also defines the last shipment date.

End of Support (EOSt)

Following End of Life we will provide RMA replacement up to 15 months from EOL i.e. in line with our warranty. Following EOL requirements for software bug-fixes will be considered on a case-by-case basis.

Pricing

Pricing of all parts and spares following the announcement of End of Sale / End of Life may be subject to change dependent on supply availability.