1. Purpose and scope
Every package technology is eventually withdrawn, when demand falls, its cost is no longer competitive, its materials or tools are no longer supported, or a successor replaces it. Because many customer products may depend on it, the withdrawal is planned across customers. Customers with long supply commitments, such as automotive and industrial customers, need the earliest notice and a clear migration path.
The purpose of this stage is to end the technology without surprising anyone: a formal discontinuance notice with last order and last shipment dates, last-time-buy plans agreed with each customer, final builds planned against the materials, substrates and tools still available, the run-out of materials, the redeployment or disposal of tools, and an archive that can answer questions about shipped parts for as long as records must be kept.
In scope: the discontinuance notice, customer notification records, last-time-buy plans, final builds, material run-out, tool redeployment and the process archive. Out of scope: customers' own product discontinuance, which follows their lifecycles using this notice as input.
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