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Software to the rescue
Tools help get RoHS under control
by Debra Bulkeley -- Electronic Business, 4/1/2006
As the electronics industry—OEMs, EMS providers and suppliers—prepare for the RoHS directive to take effect (the European Union deadline is July 1, 2006), many companies have turned to software to help them gather detailed information with less pain.
The RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) directive has led some companies to upgrade or revise their current software. Many companies, such as Texas Instruments and Celestica, have deployed a combination of homegrown programs and commercial systems to help them with the detailed reporting that RoHS compliance demands.
 Dan Shea |
The industry is also supporting IPC-1752 (Materials Declaration Management), a new standard that establishes uniform electronic data formats and standardized forms to simplify the way industry collects, tracks and discloses material content information. The IPC-1752 standard data format was developed jointly by the Association Connecting Electronics Industries (IPC), the International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) and RosettaNet.
RoHS compliance is a complicated and time-consuming process, largely because an international standard for exchanging data among suppliers is lacking.
Jerry Jacobus, director of quality and manufacturing engineering for SilverStorm Technologies, says that from a management point of view, implementing some kind of software tool has been crucial for keeping up with RoHS compliance.
SilverStorm manufactures a family of InfiniBand switches for high-performance computing applications and Host Channel Adapters (HCA). Jacobus explains that the company does a significant amount of business with OEMs. As a result, RoHS compliance is a mandate for any of its customers' products.
SilverStorm began using Arena PLM, from Arena Solutions, in May 2003, to control its approved vendor list and bill of materials (BOM) and to track costs. When Arena added compliance management capabilities in December 2005, SilverStorm started using it for its RoHS compliance efforts.
Jacobus says that all of SilverStorm's contract manufacturers use his BOMs and that they share the information with the contract manufacturers via Arena. Arena PLM is an on-demand collaborative tool, so when SilverStorm's partners access the data, it is in a secure environment.
"All of the information is in Arena, and now we can start building products against those BOMs," he says.
Standard sorely neededThe lack of an international standard for exchanging data is what spawned the development of the IPC-1752 standard. The standard provides three levels of declaration related to compliance with the RoHS directive of the six hazardous substances it governs, explains Richard Kubin, vice president of E2open and chair of the IPC 2-18 Supplier Declaration Subcommittee and of the iNEMI Materials Composition Data Exchange Project.
"The standard itself, in its simplest form, can be e-mailed back and forth, so there's no reason not to start using it," Kubin says.
RoHS means being able to ensure and demonstrate compliance to customers and regulatory authorities, which involves gathering, organizing and storing a tremendous amount of data. The IPC-1752 standard aims to simplify and lower the cost of collecting compliance data through the supply chain by reducing the number of submission formats. The standard also has the capacity to handle a digital signature that can be validated by a third party.
Says Dan Shea, CTO of Celestica, "The standard drives efficiency for us and our suppliers. We center on one form, which saves our suppliers time. It's very flexible, also." Shea adds that the IPC-1752 standard will have a "huge impact" on companies working toward RoHS compliance. "The way the industry started to approach this—all the OEMs were approaching the compliance in different ways. We needed something that was going to bring everything together."
Other alternativesKubin's company offers the E2open Eco-Compliance Solution, which automates the tracking of supplier, item and product data needed to meet eco-compliance regulations across a supply chain. In February E2open announced that its Eco-Compliance Solution supports the IPC-1752 standard data format.
One feature that differentiates E2open technology from others, Kubin says, is that the software is delivered as a service model: E2open hosts the software and hardware and has a bidirectional connection with the customers' ERP systems.
The cost of RoHS compliance to OEMs will be about 2.5 to 3 percent of their cost of goods sold, according to Technology Forecasters. Although some may cringe at the time-consuming nature of RoHS, get used it if you plan to compete in the global market.
