Building Competitive Advantage
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| Building Competitive Advantage With Design Chain Knowledge |
Welcome to the Fall 2005 Design Chain Associates E-mail Newsletter! We hope you find it useful. The purpose of this newsletter is to keep you informed of DCA's activities and offerings, announce new publications and events, as well as provide timely tips and insights you can use today. Feel free to forward it on to anyone you think would find it useful.
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Here are some very exciting events to help you keep up with the ever-changing landscape we all operate in.
October and November: The Alliance of Service Providers and Manufacturers Presents a National Series of Industry Panel Discussions on RoHS and WEEE. DCA will be participating in Palo Alto on October 18, and Boston on November 1 along with the likes of Arrow, Avnet, Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, IBM, Paramit, Omnify Software, and other industry specialists (actual participants vary location to location).
October 24-26, 2005: The Electronics Supply & Manufacturing Global Supply Chain Summit The Fairmont Hotel. San Jose, CA. Architecting value for your global supply chain. This year's Summit delivers the strategies and tactics to build successful global supply chains that deliver superior business value to the bottom line. The industry's elite will gather in Silicon Valley for three days of executive-level perspective and relationship-building.
DCA President, Mike Kirschner, will present "Beyond RoHS and WEEE: Global Environmental Initiatives and the Implications for Your Company".
As a DCA e-mail list member, you save 15% on your registration! Go to www.my-esm.com/summit Use priority code: DCA
October 26, 2005: The Power Electronics Technology Conference, Baltimore, MD. The Power Electronics industry is finding itself the target of substantial efficiency and stand-by power requirements world-wide, in addition to the material requirements we all know and love. Ken Stanvick talks about how to deal with all this regulation in his presentation entitled "RoHS: the Tip of the Environmental Compliance Iceberg".
December 14, 2005: DCA & EPTAC's Seminar Series Continues!, Boston, MA. The follow-on to our highly successful "Deadline to Lead-Free" seminar series earlier this year starts in Boston in December. Months in the making, this will cover the next level of issues the electronics industry faces in complying with increasing environmental regulation. Topics such as auditing/control of contract manufacturers, DfE/DfM/Design for Disassembly, and IPC1752 - friend or foe? will be included. More info soon! If you can't wait, send an email today!
China has notified the World Trade Organization's Committee on Technical Barriers to Trade of its proposed law entitled Administration on the Control of Pollution Caused by Electronic Information Products. The notification in English (Word document) is here. The differences between it and RoHS, and the proposed implementation date of 1 July 2006 mean a potentially huge amount of effort in a very short time for OEMs that have Chinese customers. Here are some of the details:
In July, the European Union issued it's latest regulation to drive improved environmental performance of electronic (and other energy-using) products, Directive 2005/32/EC on the eco-design of Energy-using Products (EuP). EuP targets high volume (defined as putting over 200K units/year on the market in the EU) consumer and office equipment for improved performance in terms of energy utilization and material utilization. It does not restrict the use of materials, but simply tries to drive the use of less materials that are more recyclable and have less impact on the environment. The goal is to develop an "Ecological Profile" for each product that consumers can then use as yet another metric to make their purchasing decisions. EuP has no legal requirements and would rather industry define meet voluntary goals that accomplish what EuP sets out do do. That said, the directive states that such "implementing measures" will be defined for several classes of products, including consumer electronics, PCs, and office equipment like copiers. To get an idea of what may constitute an "Ecological Profile", visit the Eco-design of EuP methodology web site.
In August the EU Issued Commission Decision 2005/618/EC, for the purpose of establishing the maximum concentration values for certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment. ‘For the purposes of Article 5(1)(a), a maximum concentration value of 0,1 % by weight in homogeneous materials for lead, mercury, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) and of 0,01 % by weight in homogeneous materials for cadmium shall be tolerated.’ Thus, there are no surprises; this has been known and expected since August of 2004.
If you need to apply for an exemption there is still time. You have until October 28, 2005 to submit your request. The fact is, though, that the EU has not even ruled yet on the last batch of "stakeholder consultations" which closed February 11, 2005. At this point there is no evidence that you will get a deferment for submitting an exemption request. If it is not approved prior to July 1, 2006 you will still have to meet the RoHS requirement on July 1, 2006 regardless of whether your request gets approved later.
As evidenced by both some of the exemption requests that are published on the EU web site listed above, as well as on that of the previous stakeholder consultation, there is still lots of confusion over requirements, exemptions and categories. The EU has done little, for example, to clarify category 9, monitoring and control instruments, or uses of lead in glass. Before you spend your time developing an exemption request, contact us for some insight and guidance.
The IPC draft standard for material declaration, IPC-1751 and IPC-1752, are in balloting now thru October 23rd. Review the drafts. We think it's a good and needed step (the revised draft allows you to remove or edit the legal statement, which was a big problem for us, DCA clients that tried to use the earlier draft, and much of the industry), but needs more support for full material declaration as will be required by EuP. Perhaps in the next revision...
October 3, 2005: Alert: China RoHS released to WTO Green Supplyline Blog. "...the requirements appear to be far broader in terms of both coverage, as well as notification for issues such as labelling, defining a "safe use life", hazardous materials contained, packaging materials, and so on, than what the European Union is already asking the industry to do..."
October 1, 2005: Lead-free journey Electronics Supply & Manufacturing. Hitachi is getting a jump on Europe's lead-free legislation. But achieving compliance is only the first of several difficult steps manufacturers must take to safeguard their supply chains.
September 29, 2005: New EU Directive Targets Product Lifecycle Design News. A new wide-ranging directive coming out of the European Union this summer may ultimately be more of a challenge than RoHS or WEEE. The Energy-using Products directive (EuP) encompasses the entire lifecycle of a product, from design and manufacturing through use and disposal. [note - EuP has no legal requirements ... yet. Stay tuned-]
September 7, 2005: Who Foots the Bill? Electronic News. The bookkeeping necessary to keep up with environmental compliance legislation is poised to grow exponentially, adding significantly to the cost and complexity of creating and managing electronics across the supply chain -- from the smallest components to the OEMs that brand them.
September, 2005: The Lead Free Deadline Is Fast Approaching … Are You Ready? Inside Supply Management. See Ken Stanvick's 10-step implementation plan.
August 31, 2005: Design Engineers Become Compliance Regulators. Avnet Advantage August 2005. As the electronics industry moves to lead-free products, the design engineer is becoming the front line soldier fighting to avoid non-compliant products.
August 25, 2005: EuP: The EU’s Latest Directive. Electronic News. The European Union has added the Directive on the Eco-design of Energy-using Products, or EuP, to its growing list of environmental compliance policies...
August 24, 2005: Psst, Do You Know What’s in Your MP3 Player?. Electronic News. ...“There’s enormous room for error,” said Michael Kirschner, president of Design Chain Associates, a consulting firm that focuses on environmental issues. “We’ve seen some manufacturers supply an enormous amount of information while others supply zero or are scrambling under a mountain of requests.”...
August 22, 2005: Materials Documentation Still a Mess. Design News. One of the thorniest issues in the conversion to lead-free electronics is compliance information. The International Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (iNEMI) worked with the IPC, the electronic industry’s packaging group, to offer a standard for collecting, tracking, and disclosing information on the material content of components, but so far the standard has done little to alleviate the confusion about RoHS certification and material content information. [ed. - in part that's because it's not an approved or accepted standard yet...]
August 20, 2005: U.S. manufacturers face deadline to get the lead out. San Jose Mercury News. Many small manufacturers in the United States are in danger of missing a deadline to remove lead and other hazardous substances from electronic products sold in Europe.
August 17, 2005: Wishing Won't Make It So. Wall Street Journal - Business Europe. The "train wreck" facing the electronics industry this week -- owing to many companies' failure to keep up with increasing global requirements for environmental performance -- was completely avoidable. It raises concerns about the level of fiduciary duty exercised by business leaders who should have done a better job of seeing it coming, and of preventing it. An Editorial by DCA, Natural Logic, and Technology Forecasters.
August 1, 2005: Chapter 4: Compliance & Transitional Issues. Electronic Design's Guide to New International Environmental Laws eBook. Has everyone who should comply with the European Union’s Restrictions on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive actually done so? According to several industry sources, consultants, analysts, and two new surveys, not nearly everyone is in compliance
July, 2005: Survey Results. Green Supply Line. We sent a survey invitation to nearly 2000 of the 3000 people who have attended our webinars, netseminars, and Deadline to Lead-Free seminars asking them where in the RoHS and WEEE compliance process their company is. We had great response (as these things go), with 174 completed surveys. So what did you say? Read on!
We value your feedback and insights on the topics in this newsletter and others. You can contact us toll-free at the number below, or simply reply to this e-mail.
Best Regards,
Michael Kirschner