Escalation Management Guidelines

The Escalation Process is an integral part of Micro-Poise Global Services. Escalations when used properly are an effective tool to obtain the necessary GSC Support, Engineering and Management resources. In order to fully initiate system activities and align resources, the Global Support Center (GSC) requests that an associated case(s) is/are opened and the issue(s) documented.

For the majority of situations encountered, the typical reasons for escalating are as follows:

• Problem severity has increased
• Lack of sufficient progress against an open case
• An Engineering Change Order (referred internally as an ECO) has not been addressed
• A proposed software patch did not fix the issue and/or introduced a new problem
• Open issues reported to the GSC are affecting product installation(s)
• Significant interruption to Client manufacturing cycle

In addition to the above, we do recognize that there maybe other legitimate reasons for escalating. The key point for customers to understand is that there are succinct actions that are primarily driven by severity and time. Please note that severity definitions and times stated are guidelines.

Definitions of Priorities

Priority 1 (P1)

Micro-Poise system is down, unable to process parts, or is in a state of degraded performance sufficient to prevent normal business operations. At this Priority, both Micro-Poise and Customer must commit to around-the-clock action and involvement by all necessary and appropriate personnel and systems until a mutually agreeable workaround is provided and normal business operations are restored.

Priority 2 (P2)

Micro-Poise system is experiencing an infrequent, isolated, or intermittent "Panic" or "Hang", or is in a state of degraded performance that allows business operations to continue but at an inconsistent or less than optimal rate. At this Priority, Micro-Poise is committed to a commercially reasonable best effort to provide a workaround and/or restore normal operations as quickly as possible.

Priority 3 (P3)

Micro-Poise system is experiencing an issue, anomaly, or cosmetic defect that inflicts little or no business impact, and where a viable and mutually agreeable workaround or hardware/software upgrade exists to mitigate the problem.

Priority 4 (P4)

Normal requests for information regarding the installation, configuration, use and maintenance of your equipment. This includes administrative inquiries and return material authorization (RMA) information. There is no impact to your production systems or business operations.