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At absolutely no cost to you my loyal supply chain fanatics I have added a RoHS countdown clock to this blog. If you scroll down on the right hand side you'll see it just below the archives.
What? Not familiar with RoHS? Read on... Beginning July 1, 2006 new electrical and electronic equipment sold within the European Union (EU) cannot contain lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated bihenyls or poly brominated diphenyl ethers. These substances can be found in anything from computers to radios to refrigerators. Eliminating them will be no easy task. These substances must be replaced by other, presumably less hazardous substances. If you are a movie buff hexavalent chromium may ring a bell. It's the chemical that was poisoning a town in the movie Erin Brockovich (played by Julia Roberts). So this is a good thing that the EU has passed this legislation.
Supply chains will be crucial in ensuring that products comply. A company such as IBM for example has 33,000 suppliers. We need to make sure that all of them sell us RoHS compliant parts, because at the end of the day we are responsible. I recently was briefed on the process that has been put in place to elminate errors and it thankfully is fool proof.
Electronic manufacturers cannot avoid RoHS if theywant to do business in the European Union. So non-compliance is not an option. For further information click here.
2 comments:
What role does your PLM solution play in RoHS/WEE complaince at IBM?
Interesting that you ask that. You either know me and know that I spent several years in IBM PLM or you are very clairvoyant. I assume you are asking about what IBM uses internally for RoHS/WEEE. At a high level, we use ENOVIA (from our PLM portfolio) for our Bill of Materials, which links up with i2 eXplore and Synopsis. Synopsis contains the environmental compliance data, which assures that non-compliant parts are not selected for production by product engineers. We also sell a product called SMARTEAM that could work as well. I hope that helps. An lengthy article on this will be appearing in Electronic News in October.
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