1. Purpose and scope
When a product is discontinued, test is often the last activity on it: the last-time buy has to be tested, and after that the hardware and tester time are reused. What is not archived then is usually lost, and questions about shipped parts can arrive years later.
The stage starts with the test end-of-life plan, agreed when the discontinuance is announced, and ends when the last parts are tested and the archive is complete and checked. In between, the test floor keeps running the released program for normal orders, so the end-of-life work runs alongside sustaining rather than after it.
The quality of this stage is judged years later, when someone needs an answer from the archive. A good end of life leaves a complete, readable record, a named owner for it, and hardware and testers handed back for reuse with their disposition recorded.
12 more sections for registered members.