Compliance system tackles RoHS reporting
-- Test & Measurement World, 7/31/2006 5:19:00 AM
EMA Design Automation announced at the Design Automation Conference its EMA Compliance Assurance System (CAS) to support companies striving to comply with the variety of mandatory requirements for environmental legislations. CAS is an adjunct to the EMA Engineering Data Management (EDM) system.
The CAS system is designed to handle various environmental compliance regulations imposed by governments around the world. The architecture allows for plug-in modules to handle the specifics of any one piece of legislation, with the first available module covering EU RoHS 2006 Due Diligence Reporting.
If the RoHS compliance of a product is challenged triggering a governmental audit, the company producing the product often has 28 days to submit evidence documenting compliance and demonstrating due diligence in the procurement and manufacturing processes. “Even for a small bill of materials, the size of the documents required can be measured in inches or pounds,” said Manny Marcano, president and CEO at EMA. “It is hard to imagine anyone not using an automated method to generate this type of documentation.”
Companies must go beyond showing that the parts they choose are compliant, Marcano said. The process for choosing and procuring compliant parts should be documented to show that the parts are actually compliant via vendors’ Certificates of Compliance” and empirical testing. In addition, the methods used to specify the components and manufacture the product should be demonstrated to be compliant.
EMA has partnered with Ageus Solutions to create the Due Diligence Report (DDR) documenting the methods used to achieve compliance. “The key to being able to respond to a product challenge is getting compliant processes and procedures in place and documented ahead of time,” said Bruce Calder, president at Ageus. “We rely on our environmental compliance and legislation background to produce compliance and due diligence reports on the processes and procedures that the company uses in a form suitable to the governing body.”
Only one Due Diligence Report template is required for each company, division, or product group, depending on the organization of the company. This template is then used for each product compliance document created. CAS uses the data created during the design process and stored in EDM to compile the supporting compliance documents for the parts and the subassemblies that make up the product. This would include all electrical and mechanical parts, paints and other coatings, and anything else used to produce the product. CAS collates the data from the EDM system along with the company Due Diligence Report into the proper format to produce the final compliance assurance document.
“The beauty of the system is that with the right up front work and our Compliance by Design methodology, companies no longer need to fear a compliance audit, “said Marcano. “All of the supporting data is available and a report can be generated at the push of a button.”
