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News and New Products
RoHS Creates New Business Opportunities
By Ed Sperling -- Electronic News, 8/11/2005
Compliance with the European Restriction of Hazardous Substances(RoHS) regulations is creating a number of new business opportunities across the globe as companies race to cash in on the new rules.
In the future, many components will be designed with full awareness of the other components used in developing them, something that is difficult to know at present when cobbling together a system on a chip. Not knowing if parts contain the six banned substances -- lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, cadmium and the bromine-containing flame retardants PBB and PBDE -- could create a liability nightmare for OEMs and ultimately result in lost market opportunities for them and their subcontractors.
That fact hasn’t gone unnoticed by distributors such as Avnet, Arrow and Newark, which have begun offering services to “scrub” a bill of materials for parts that may not be in compliance. That’s particularly possible with their vast databases of parts information.
In conjunction with that, some EDA vendors have begun pitching in, as well. EMA Design Automation, for example, has added a parametric search capability into its EDA software. “You can populate the parametric attributes with lead-free parts at the design stage,” said Manny Marconi, the company’s president. “It also provides temperature specs and footprints.”
Marconi said that until now, most companies have assumed that you check over the parts list when a product gets to manufacturing. While it’s still possible to fix there, it’s more expensive and takes time. By tying its software to PartMiner’s database, EMA can tap into a broad array of parts at the design stage.
“One of the major costs is not so much compliance but test and measurement,” Marconi explained. “To be leading edge, you need to be compliant. Our philosophy is solve the problem by getting real-time information. If companies can’t ship to Europe, they’re missing a huge market.”
In China, which has become a center for global electronics manufacturing, numerous companies are looking for ways to capitalize on RoHS. Already, 10 authorized facilities have been set up to provide RoHS testing, and an unknown number of others have sprouted up along with them. Not all of them are legitimate, however.
“When you look for RoHS test service providers, check if it is authorized by the China National Accreditation of Laboratories,” warned Mingjun Wang, deputy manager of the China National Analytical Center (CNAC). Because CNAC has agreements with the European Union, United States and Japan, as well as 40 other countries, its test reports are accepted in those places. Wang noted that all of the center's test results have to be certified before they are released.
China is working on its own rules that likely will mimic Europe’s, but the regulations have been delayed by co-ordinations among the government organizations that are responsible for formulating those rules. Among the organizations involved are the Ministry of Information Industry, Ministry of Commerce, State Development and Reform Commission, General Administration of Customs, General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine, the State Environmental Protection Administration, and the State Administration for Industry and Commerce.
