End-of-life
Encyclopedia
End-of-life is a term used with respect to a product
supplied to customers, indicating that the product is in the end of its useful lifetime and a vendor will no longer be marketing
, selling, or sustaining a particular product and may also be limiting or ending support for the product. In the specific case of product sales, the term end-of-sale (EOS) has also been used. The term lifetime, after the last production date, depends on the product and is related to a customer's expected product lifetime. Different lifetime examples include toys from fast food chains (weeks or months), cars (10 years), and mobile phones (3 years).
Product support
during EOL varies by product. For hardware with an expected lifetime of 10 years after production ends, the support includes spare parts, technical support and service. Spare part lifetimes are price-driven due to increasing production costs: when the parts no longer can be supplied through a high volume production site (often closed when series production ends), the cost increases.
With hardware products, the term has come to incorporate the disposal and recycle-ability of an article. Many companies are now charging a "recycling" fee up front to cover the cost of disposal at end of life. Many hardware products are now engineered with end of life in mind.
End of life ultimately leads to the concept of disposal - what is done with the end product after its useful life is over. Often this is neglected in life-cycle planning, leading to the needs for society to absorb the cost of responsible disposal.
Product (business)
In general, the product is defined as a "thing produced by labor or effort" or the "result of an act or a process", and stems from the verb produce, from the Latin prōdūce ' lead or bring forth'. Since 1575, the word "product" has referred to anything produced...
supplied to customers, indicating that the product is in the end of its useful lifetime and a vendor will no longer be marketing
Marketing
Marketing is the process used to determine what products or services may be of interest to customers, and the strategy to use in sales, communications and business development. It generates the strategy that underlies sales techniques, business communication, and business developments...
, selling, or sustaining a particular product and may also be limiting or ending support for the product. In the specific case of product sales, the term end-of-sale (EOS) has also been used. The term lifetime, after the last production date, depends on the product and is related to a customer's expected product lifetime. Different lifetime examples include toys from fast food chains (weeks or months), cars (10 years), and mobile phones (3 years).
Product support
Product support
Product support is a service provided by many retailers of various products, primarily electronics, that provides the end-user with a resource for information regarding the product, and help if the product should malfunction...
during EOL varies by product. For hardware with an expected lifetime of 10 years after production ends, the support includes spare parts, technical support and service. Spare part lifetimes are price-driven due to increasing production costs: when the parts no longer can be supplied through a high volume production site (often closed when series production ends), the cost increases.
- In the computingComputingComputing is usually defined as the activity of using and improving computer hardware and software. It is the computer-specific part of information technology...
field, this has significance in the production and supportability of software and hardware products. For example, MicrosoftMicrosoftMicrosoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...
marked Windows 98Windows 98Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
for end-of-life on June 30, 2006. Its software produced after that date, such as Office 2007 (released November 30, 2006), is not supported on Windows 98Windows 98Windows 98 is a graphical operating system by Microsoft. It is the second major release in the Windows 9x line of operating systems. It was released to manufacturing on 15 May 1998 and to retail on 25 June 1998. Windows 98 is the successor to Windows 95. Like its predecessor, it is a hybrid...
or any prior versions. Depending on vendor, this may differ from end of service life, which has the added distinction that a system or software will no longer be supported by the vendor providing support.
With hardware products, the term has come to incorporate the disposal and recycle-ability of an article. Many companies are now charging a "recycling" fee up front to cover the cost of disposal at end of life. Many hardware products are now engineered with end of life in mind.
End of life ultimately leads to the concept of disposal - what is done with the end product after its useful life is over. Often this is neglected in life-cycle planning, leading to the needs for society to absorb the cost of responsible disposal.
See also
- End of Life Vehicles DirectiveEnd of Life Vehicles DirectiveThe End of Life Vehicles Directive is a Directive of the European Union addressing the end of life for automotive products. Every year, motor vehicles which have reached the end of their useful lives create between 8 and 9 million tonnes of waste in the European Union...
, a Directive of the European Union - Planned obsolescencePlanned obsolescencePlanned obsolescence or built-in obsolescence in industrial design is a policy of deliberately planning or designing a product with a limited useful life, so it will become obsolete or nonfunctional after a certain period of time...
- Product life cycle managementProduct life cycle managementProduct life-cycle management is the succession of strategies used by business management as a product goes through its life-cycle. The conditions in which a product is sold changes over time and must be managed as it moves through its succession of stages.Product life-cycle Like human beings,...
- Backward compatibilityBackward compatibilityIn the context of telecommunications and computing, a device or technology is said to be backward or downward compatible if it can work with input generated by an older device...
- NewlineNewlineIn computing, a newline, also known as a line break or end-of-line marker, is a special character or sequence of characters signifying the end of a line of text. The name comes from the fact that the next character after the newline will appear on a new line—that is, on the next line below the...
(end-of-line) - End-of-fileEnd-of-fileIn computing, end of file is a condition in a computer operating system where no more data can be read from a data source...
Further reading
- Scharnhorst, W., Althaus, H.-J., Hilty, L. and Jolliet, O.: Environmental assessment of End-of-Life treatment options for an GSM 900 antenna rack, Int J LCA., 11 (6), pp: 426-436. 2006
- Scharnhorst, W., Althaus, H.-J., Classen, M., Jolliet, O. and Hilty, L. M.: End of Life treatment of second generation mobile phone networks: strategies to reduce the environmental impact, Env Imp Ass Rev 25 (5), pp: 540-566. 2005