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Services RoHS Frequently Asked Questions
- General
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What is RoHS?
The European Union Directive on the Restriction of the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment, referred to as the RoHS Directive, was entered into force by the European Parliament and the Council on 27 January 2003.
The RoHS Directive restricts the use of the following 6 substances in electrical and electronic products "put on the market" in the European Union after July 1, 2006:
- Lead
- Cadmium
- Mercury
- Hexavalent chromium
- Polybrominated biphenyls (PBB)
- Polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE)
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I don't work in EMEA, why is this important to me?
Sun is replacing certain products and re-engineering others to meet these substance restrictions for electrical and electronic equipment products we sell after July 1, 2006, or is utilizing allowable exemptions permitted under the law. Although applicable to equipment put on the market in the European Union, Sun, in keeping with other companies within the industry, is treating this as a product portfolio change for equipment sold globally. This change to Sun's entire equipment product line is to ensure that we deliver the same products and services to our customers, regardless of where in the world they are located, and in anticipation of similar substance restriction legislation coming into effect in other parts of the world.
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Is Sun's response to RoHS being deployed globally?
Essentially Yes.Consider that our large OEMs and end-user customers will anticipate receiving the same products and the same consistent services around the world, and consider the cost and complexity of trying to maintain separate product sets for those countries where RoHS laws are in place and those countries where there are not yet RoHS laws. Once the transition is complete, the products Sun offer and our services and service processes will be the same everywhere.
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What happens if we don't maintain compliance?
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Where can I get more information about RoHS?
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What is happening to Sun's products?
Broadly, all of Sun's existing equipment product line is expected to be discontinued, revised or replaced prior to June 30, 2006 to meet the requirements of the RoHS Directive. There are some systems that are already RoHS compliant, some are not. For many products, Sun will 'end of life' the non-compliant versions, which means that they will no longer be available for sale. Sun will continue to service those products, as we do today. For some of those products, we will introduce alternative, compliant systems , and for a small number, there will be no alternative compliant product offered.
For about 25 of our systems, we will re-engineer them to use compliant parts, but will continue to market and sell the compliant versions with the same product name as the existing, non-compliant version, in order to make the change transparent and to minimize confusion otherwise caused by a large number of model changes at once.
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Why is important for Sun?
Simply put, if we do not make the transition to compliant systems, we will not be able to sell our products to customers within the European Union or to any customer within the rest of the world that subsequently puts the Sun products on the market in the EU. This represents a very significant part of our overall revenues.
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What are our competitors doing?
Much the same as us, they are re-engineering or replacing their existing product lines to ensure that the can continue to do business, with minimal interruption, within the EU.
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Should I be worried about these 'hazardous' materials?
Sun's products are not considered hazardous when used as intended, and the substance composition of our products is generally not considered a human health or environmental concern when used (including when servicing the products).The RoHS Directive addresses the concerns relating to the effect on the environment of six regulated substances within product when that product is end of lifed or disposed.
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Are there any more FAQs that are not service specific?
There are extensive internal-Sun FAQs in SunWIN at token 
#475750. If you are unfamiliar with using SunWIN, a couple of things to beware of. It still uses the 'Regis' password, rather than ldap, so you may find you can only get access with an 'old' password. Also, the first time you try to access, you may have to log in, and then click the link for a second time. (But that might be just me...)
- RoHS impact on Services
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What are the implications for service generally?
The spare parts exemption under the RoHS Directive permits Sun to use spare parts that do not comply with the RoHS substance restrictions to repair, or for the reuse of, non-compliant equipment previously put on the market before July 1.
However, Sun cannot use spare parts that do not comply with the RoHS substance restrictions with RoHS-compliant equipment. Therefore, to enable Services to support our new RoHS-compliant equipment, we are starting to build stocks of RoHS compliant spare parts in our spares inventory. While many of the RoHS-compliant spare parts have been qualified as field replacement units (FRUs) for existing non-compliant equipment put on the market before July 1, 2006, Sun may experience supply constraints for these new, compliant FRUs.
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I work in Services, but not in EMEA, why should I care?
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Why do we need the Closed Loop Action Plan process?
The Closed Loop Action Plan process has already been rolled out in the Americas Timezone, with deployment efforts underway in EMEA and APAC. Leaving aside the benefits of its introduction to RoHS, the Closed Loop Action Plan process, and its associated tools addressed a number of issues identified through customer satisfaction feedback, analysis of operational performance and SunSigma projects. Among the issues addressed.
- Action plans can be inconsistent and incomplete
- We have high rates of parts used per case, and higher rates of good (or unused) parts returned than we would like. (Ordering and returning good parts still costs real money in terms of shipments and stocking levels.)
- We have too many cases requiring multiple site visits
- We make simple, understandable, errors, for example, mis-type the requested part numbers
- Some of our diagnostic engineers (who typically work in solution centres) receive no feedback to state whether the action plan worked or not, so don't know if they need to do something differently.
The Services RoHS team took the opportunity of working closely with the Closed Loop Action Plan team to modify the action plan creator tool to be aware of RoHS, and ensure that, for example, once a RoHS compliant system had been identified, only RoHS compliant components could be selected to repair that system. The use of the tool is a key change to our processes to ensure that we do not inadvertently select a non-compliant spare part for installation in a RoHS compliant system.
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Broadly, what do we need to do differently when servicing systems?
For those systems that are 'end of (sales) lifed' before July 1, 2006, or for new systems released as compliant we can continue to service and repair by identifying the correct part from the Sub System Handbook, as we have typically done.
For those systems where compliant and non-compliant versions exist, we must be very careful to identify the version (through the system serial number primarily) and diagnose against the appropriate system and related parts in the Sun System Handbook (SSH).
To better manage inventory and supply of RoHS-compliant FRUs, and with the goal of mitigating any risk of “stock out” situations, use non-compliant FRUs to service or repair existing non-compliant equipment to the maximum extent possible. Until further notice, use of RoHS-compliant FRUs should be limited to the repair of RoHS-compliant equipment.
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Which job roles are affected by RoHS?
Customer facing positions within Services must be aware of the RoHS Directive and act accordingly. Our remote diagnostic engineers must be careful to diagnose the right system; our field/on-site engineers must check that the system information that we used to diagnose the system actually matches the system we are working on; our service account managers will have to make our customers aware of the Directive and explain why system serial number is important to enable Sun to service their systems quickly and accurately.
Web based training, to assist with understanding and awareness for RoHS impacts on Sun's Services business, and to help outline any specific changes in our normal activities will be available later in Q4 FY06.
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Why don't we just replace all our old spares?
Replacing Sun's spares inventory was one of several options which were considered to address the RoHS Directive. The most significant impact of such an option was scrapping large quantities of otherwise functional equipment. Sun was concerned that needlessly generating such waste equipment would be of questionable environmental benefit and may not be considered environmentally friendly.. Finally, we anticipate, in the short term, that we may experience short supply of some compliant components, as components sometimes are available only when Sun releases new products. If utilitized effectively, we will have sufficient compliant inventory to service the compliant installed base, but not necessarily enough to service the non-compliant products put on the EU market before July 1, 2006.
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Will we always have non-compliant spares?
Sun anticipates maintaining both compliant and non-compliant spares inventory into the future. For the non-compliant products which we discontinue selling in Q3-4FY06, we will provide service on these systems for several years, and, often, the only spare available will be non-compliant. However, for the systems that will have compliant and non-compliant versions, the compliant parts will often be 'backward compatible' meaning that the compliant part has been tested and qualified to work in the non-compliant system. Where that backwards compatibility exists, we will likely reduce the non-compliant spare parts inventory, until we get to point that only compliant parts are available.
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What about MVS support?
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How do our self-maintainers, OEMs and indirect service partners deal with this?
For systems that EOL before July 1, 2006, or systems that are only available as a compliant version, these systems should be serviced by selecting the appropriate part from the SSH, as we have typically done to this point. For the systems with both compliant and non-compliant versions, the customer/OEM/service partner can do one of 2 things.
- If feasible, visually inspect the failed component. identify the sun part number and replace 'like with like'. This will help ensure that the appropriate part is selected, and avoids inadvertently placing a non-compliant part into a compliant system.
- Compare the serial number with the serial number ranges given with FIN xxx, and use the Sun System Handbook (SSH) entry to help diagnose. Use non-compliant FRUs to service or repair existing non-compliant equipment to the maximum extent possible. Until further notice, use of RoHS-compliant FRUs should be limited to the repair of RoHS-compliant equipment, wherever possible.
- Services RoHS training
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Where is the RoHS training?
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What training must I complete?
RoHS has big implications. The most important of these are the legal implications for the company if we do not comply, however, its also important to understand the impacts on the products we sell and the way we must service those products to maintain customer satisfaction, and also to understand how our global adoption of RoHS fits as part of wider environmental efforts.
For those reasons, Services management has determined that the awareness course (WZT-1325 and WXI-1325) is mandatory for all Services employees and managers (ie everyone!), and for all customer facing partner employees and their managers.
All Sun and partner field and customer facing engineers who support Sun hardware must complete a second course, which contains specific information on process changes (WZT-1326). This class is anticipated to be completed by mid June 2006.
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When will course WZT-1326 be available?
As a team, we are working hard to make this course available for mid-June 2006. Ideally, we would have liked to make this available earlier, but we have needed the time to ensure that the process changes proposed work and to ensure that tools are adapted appropriately
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I'm not in a customer facing role. Why is this training mandatory?
Firstly, to clarify, only the awareness module is mandatory for Sun and partner staff. The followup course must be completed by those directly involved in our case management processes.
After much consideration, Services management decided to make the course mandatory for the following reasons,
- The legal implications for failing to meet RoHS compliance vary, and are set out the course, but are significant. Our organisation needs to understand this
- Other actions, by engineering and manufacturing for example, to ensure compliance of our products, while minimising the impact on customers, does have an impact on the way we service our products, regardless of whether service is taking place in a location that the RoHS directive is in effect. Without understanding the implications, and the changes we are making to service processes, we risk significant customer satisfaction and cost implications. We clearly must minimise these risks.
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I'm a software guy. What training do I need to take?
For more details, review the questions above. Briefly, you must attend the awareness course (WZT-1325) and complete the assessment (WXI-1325). If your role is customer facing, unless you are never involved in hardware related service issues, you should complete the followup course, WZT-1326 when it is available.
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I'm having trouble accessing SLP, what should I do?
The course announcement contains information about how to access SLP. If you are having trouble, click on the 'Technical Support' link on the left hand navigation bar, and follow the instructions there depending on the problem you have. If you are having trouble accessing http://slp.sun.com/sun note that this will redirect you to a secure site (https protocol) outside of SWAN, so you may need to check your browser proxies. Check that you have an 'SSL' proxy set.
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Why does SLP seem slow to me?
With so many people trying to taking this training around the same time, we have received some reports that SLP can be a little slow during core US business hours. If you can access SLP outside those hours, you should find the performance improved
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How do I avoid some of the common user problems with SLP?
In order for the courses to reflect a completion please launch
the course and from within the course, please select "Progress Map" from
the left hand menu. From here you will see what sections of the course are
not completed yet.
Modules and Topics will be marked as either not visited, visited or completed.
You need to ensure ALL Modules and Topics are marked as completed
based on the colour code located at the top of the "Progress Map" window.
If there are sections reflected as not visited or visited, then select the
affected sections and complete and do this for all the section(s) that are not
reflected as completed.
Once all the sections of the course under the "Progress Map" are reflected as
complete, then "Exit the Course" and the course should then be reflected as
100% complete and move from the "My Courses" to the "My History" page.
In order to ensure the proper communication between the SLP and it's
courses, please do not cancel and re-enroll in the courses on the SLP as
this affects the tracking and course progress of the SLP courses. If a
student experiences an issue with a course/assessment completion
rather submit a servicedesk ticket for the issue to be investigated further,
instead of attempting to cancel and re-enroll in the course/assessment.
In addition, in order to ensure the proper communication between the
SLP and it's courses, please do the following steps before using the SLP:
- Disable any Pop-up Blocking software.(Including those included in the
browser and with browser Toolbars)
- Disable any Anti-Spyware or Anti-Adware software. (If applicable)
- Lower your security settings with any Firewall Software (If applicable)
- Set your browser's cookie setting to "Accept ALL Cookies" without
being prompted
- Set your browser's cache setting to checkfor newer versions of stored/
cached pages on "Every visit to the page"
- Clear your browser's cached information.
- Exit (File -> Exit) your browser and all associated applications.
- Restart your browser
When using courses on the SLP, please ensure the following:
-Let the course pages load completely.
- Do not leave the course idle for extended periods of time.
- Use the "Exit" or "Close" button from within the course to Exit.
- Allow any pop-up windows to close themselves.
- Allow your My Courses page to refresh before logging out.
If students wish to re-take the WXI-1325 assessment they can do so
by doing the following if the assessment is not reflected as completed
and still in the "My Courses" page or it is reflected as completed on the
"My History" page but reflected as "failed" instead of "Passed" under the
student's SLP login.
The student should NOT select the Re-take option for the course or
assessment.
You can either select the "Continue" or "Start" option on the "My Courses"
page or the "Review" option for this assessment on the "My History" page
under your SLP login and then you can then retake the test by selecting "Exit"
and then "Exit and Reset" which will clear the answers already done and then
re-launch the assessment and answer all the questions then select the "Submit"
option and then to exit this assessment select the "Exit" option then the "Yes"
option to retain the answers submitted.
Please note that the statistics for the assessment is only viewable from within
the assessment itself,by selecting the "Status" option within the assessment
and does not display the score on the "My History" page for that assessment by
design.
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Where do I get management reporting regarding course attendance and completion?
Following are the instructions to generate completion status reports:
Go to: https://keystone.central.sun.com/reports/
Go to: Detailed Training Reports
Click on: Course Report
You will be prompted for employee ID and Regis password (note: this is different from your
LDAP password)
Search for course "1325"
Select WZI-1325 for the Assessment module
Select start date 01-April-2006, end date = today's date
Sort Order: Last name, Complete date
Select output: you can view results on-screen and also have the results sent to you in e-mail form (pipe delimited format)
FYI...You can run dept level roll-up reports (no name detail) the using the "Summary Training t Reports" section.
- How did we select the changes we are making?
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Why are we making these changes?
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What is the overall objective for these changes?
Our team agreed that our objective was to drive and implement a set of changes that would minimise the risk of failing to maintain RoHS compliance as a result of service activity, while minimising the impact on our customers' service experience. At the same time we had to direct the effective use of our spares inventory, in terms maximising availability of spares for new and revised systems, minimising the need to increase spares inventory, either as a result of large 'last time buys' or larger than needed new product spare purchase, and to ensure that our inventory is used in such a way that we minimise the scrapping of working spare parts, with the implication of increased material use and subsequent effect of the environment.
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What criteria did we use to select the changes?
- Firstly, we have to ensure we minimise any impact on our customer's experience. That means that we avoid asking extra questions if we have to, we avoid sending out parts that we don't have to, that any increased to the time we take to performance tasks are kept to a minimum, while minimising the risk of failing to maintain RoHS compliance.
- The team recognised that the timetable we were working to meant that the changes we identified had to be implemented quickly.
- As a team, we recognised very early in our discussions that there was not a single change that we could make that would eliminate all risk of failing to meet RoHS compliance, so we had to identify a series of changes that would each minimise that risk.
- We realised that we had to accept that some data that we have to work with is not always accurate (for example, a customer may mis-quote that serial number of the system that they are requesting service for).
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How did we arrive at the changes?
Our team has a broad representation from all our delivery organisation and functions. The members of the team consulted many others as we tested and refined our plans. Briefly, we used the information that we had captured through those discussions in a formal sigma FMEA (Fault Mode Effect Analysis) to help identify points in our delivery processes where risks might be present, and identify potential changes to reduce, mitigate or eliminate that risk.
- Technical details
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How do I know if a system is compliant or non-compliant?
For the most part, any system that has 'end of (sales) lifed' by June 30, 2006 will be non-compliant, and any system that we continue to sell after July 1, 2006 are compliant. From the perspective of servicing these system, there is one list of parts that are appropriate for that system.
However, there is a limited list of about 25 systems and disk subsystems which have been (or will be) manufactured in both compliant and non-compliant forms.
The preferred means of identification is through the use of the sccweb action plan creator tool. The tool has recently been updated to to ensure that only parts that are appropriate for that system can be selected, including consideration for RoHS compliant systems. If this tool cannot be used, the alternate means of identification is by capturing the system serial number and comparing with the guidance given in 1000169.1. If the system does not appear in the FAB, then it has only been manufactured in either a compliant or non-compliant form. The FAB addendum will be updated with system specific information as those systems are released.
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Which systems (will) have compliant and non-compliant versions?
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Why does the system I am servicing not appear in the list in the addendum to FIN 102250
Only systems which have been shipped in a compliant and non-compliant version appears in the list. If the system you are servicing doesn't appear on the list it means that it has only been shipped in either a non-compliant or compliant version. (This might be because the compliant version has not started shipping yet.) You do not need to take the additional step of assessing whether the system is compliant or not before you diagnose with help from the Sun System Handbook, since there is only one version, and as such there will be only one set of appropriate spare parts for that system.
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What does 'Y' and 'YL' mean?
Y and YL are two of the possible Hazard Class Codes that Sun is using to help manage our parts and systems. You may also see N, Z and 'blank' being used.
Y - Based on present information and belief, this equipment/part number complies with the European Union RoHS Directive, 2002/95/EC, and amending and guidance documents, and does not contain any restricted substances above the homogeneous materials' maximum concentration values, except for selected exemptions allowed by law (EXCLUDING the exemption for lead in solders for servers, storage and storage array systems, network infrastructure equipment for switching, signaling, transmission as well as network management for telecommunications).
YL - Based on present information and belief, this equipment/part number complies with the European Union RoHS Directive, 2002/95/EC, and amending and guidance documents, and does not contain any restricted substances above the homogeneous materials' maximum concentration values, except for selected exemptions allowed by law (INCLUDING the exemption for lead in solders for servers, storage and storage array systems, network infrastructure equipment for switching, signaling, transmission as well as network management for telecommunications).
N - Based on present information and belief, this equipment/part number does not comply with the European Union RoHS Directive, 2002/95/EC, and may contain restricted substances above the homogeneous materials' maximum concentration values.
Z - Based on present information and belief, the European Union RoHS Directive, 2002/95/EC, does not apply to this equipment/part number.
blank - The applicability of the European Union RoHS Directive, 2002/95/EC, to this equipment is presently unknown; this equipment/part number may contain restricted substances above the homogeneous materials' maximum concentration values.
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What if the customer system is not running Solaris?
Solaris[TM] has an explorer package which is used to gather
configuration information from a platform. This package provides most of
the information an engineer will need during initial problem diagnosis,
in a single file, that is small and easy to transfer from the customer
to the engineer.
Other Operating Systems that are supported on sun platforms have
differnet and varied 'explorer-like' scripts, that are documented below.
Gathering Platform data from a Windows 2000/XP Operating System
System Information, Driver Revisions, Modules loaded
c:/Program Files/Common files/Microsoft Shared/MSInfo/msinfo32 /report
report.txt
From the GUI
Start -> Programs -> Accessories -> System Tools -> System information
Once the information has been refreshed
then click on Action -> Save as Text File
DirectX information gathering - DXdiag information gathering
Start -> Run -> dxdiag
Then click on Save All Information
Event log recording
Start -> Settings -> Control Panel -> Event Viewer -> Select log
Then click Action -> Save log file as...
Registry Saving to disk
Start -> Run -> regedit
Select Registry -> Export Registry File
Gathering Platform data from a Red Hat Linux Operating System
RHEL 3 and 4 ship with sysreport, which gathers a large amount of
explorer-like information. Most of the hardware info under linux is
under /proc, which can change.
It produces a tar file in /tmp, which can then be sent in to sun
There is a linux-explorer package, not written by Sun, which gathers
much the same data
Gathering Platform data from a Suse Linux Operating system and Sun Java Desktop System
Suse uses SIGA (System information GAthering) scripts, or the packages
are available from href=http://www.hennevogel.de.sun.com/index.php?site=siga
Gathering Platform data from Solaris x86.
Solaris[TM] x86 supports the sun explorer package.
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How do I find out about the FRUs in my customer's system?
In most instances, running the prtfru command will provide detailed information on the parts in the system you are servicing. However, working through what can sometimes be a very long report can be awkward. A tool has been developed to help format the output of prtfru -x. The web page contains additional guidance for particular product ranges.
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C-LAP? Action plan creator tool? What are these things?
You may see the 'Closed Loop Action Plan' process referred to as 'C-LAP' (pronounced see-lap). This process, already implemented in the Americas, and being deployed in EMEA and APAC in Q4FY06, is designed to improve the servicing of customers equipment by developing better action plans, which reduce part usage and on-site visits, and by providing feedback to engineers on the success of the action plans that they create. The action plan creator tool is the tool used by engineers to create accurate, consistently formatted on-site action plans for our field and on-site engineers to follow.
- What to say to customers
- Partner Specific Questions
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Is there anything that I can give to my partner?
There are extensive partner ready FAQs in SunWIN at token
#475765. Some of the material is sales oriented but you may find very useful nevertheless. If you are unfamiliar with using SunWIN, a couple of things to beware of. It still uses the 'Regis' password, rather than ldap, so you may find you can only get access with an 'old' password. Also, the first time you try to access, you may have to log in, and then click the link for a second time. (But that might be just me...)
- Contacts
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What if I can't find an answer to my RoHS question?
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