By Chuck Cimalore
CTO, Omnify Software
DesignFax Online
April, 2006

As an electronics manufacturer, the pressure is on to meet the looming Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) deadline. How will you ensure that the products you develop are free of hazardous materials? When you are sourcing thousands of components from a myriad of suppliers, the task seems impossible. Product lifecycle management (PLM) helps address this problem by providing a means to store, manage, and retrieve product data in a unified location. However, this alone is not the answer. To truly ensure end products are compliant with new environmental mandates, manufacturers also need easy access to accurate content. Integrating PLM with content solutions designed for compliance management affords businesses a way to gain assurances early in the product development process that end products will meet the various compliance requirements.

Environmental regulations

The RoHS directive indicates the maximum allowable percentage of hazardous materials used in consumer electronics and computer products. These percentages vary from country to country, and sometimes from state to state. To ensure compliance, manufacturers require a means of identifying and tracking concentration values by weight in homogeneous (materials that cannot be further decomposed into different materials) components. Manufacturers are responsible and liable for non-compliance. This involves establishing a documented and auditable system that prevents non-complying products from entering the European Union and other countries ratifying such laws. Businesses must demonstrate that they exercised all due diligence to avoid committing an offense.

The cost of non-compliance is steep, as Sony realized the hard way. In May 2001, Dutch customs officials seized 1.3 million Sony Playstation game systems worth approximately $162 million because the cables contained levels of cadmium 20 times the limit set by environmental regulations. The company had to redesign Playstation 2 games to meet RoHS specifications.

Compliance roadblocks

There is a level of chaos associated with meeting RoHS requirements and many manufacturers are struggling to find the best approach. Many are hoping the directives will never be enforced.

A recent study by AMR Research revealed that OEMs are having difficulty preparing for compliance. Roadblocks include:

• Locating and verifying data for thousands of parts from countless suppliers;
• Component information that changes rapidly, making it difficult to ensure the validity;
• Engineering, design, and procurement teams lack visibility into compliance data;
• No clear insight into the depth of information needed to mitigate risk;
• Reliance on third-parties to collect information that affects their own risk.

Designing for the environment with PLM

A common practice among manufacturers is waiting until the manufacturing phase (when a design is complete) to build a compliant product. This is highly ineffective. While it seems easy enough to swap out non-compliant parts, the reality is this can cause costly redesign for the manufacturer. For example, common lead-free alternatives such as tin or copper have higher melting points, which could alter the resulting product. Each new element must be analyzed for compatibility and assurances that it will not degrade quality. Such unexpected changes late in the design process can have a significant impact on product quality, release dates, and ultimately on the bottom line.

A better approach is to make compliance a factor in design decisions. Making environmental compliance an inherent part of the design process helps avoid costly late stage redesign problems. PLM systems play a key role in this design methodology by guiding engineers in selecting compliant parts. PLM systems collect, aggregate, and analyze substance data for all materials at the earliest stage of development and procurement to ensure all components meet compliance standards. In addition to being a centralized location for product-related data, PLM systems can also integrate their data directly with engineering design tools. Incorporating a database that encompasses an extended set of component data, including engineering parameters and business data (costs, lead times, availability, etc.) as well as RoHS and WEEE information, into schematic design allows engineers to select parts based on engineering specifications, business information, and compliance data.

Another key aspect of RoHS compliance is the importance of document management and reporting. Documented proof of compliance is required; otherwise, regulated geographies can bar entry. PLM solutions can support the variety of data and documents that need to be managed, including vendor declarations or certificates of compliance, datasheets, material composition/breakdown, and even test results.

PLM systems can provide manufacturers with the ability to generate compliance reports at any point of the design cycle and encompass data from the entire product level or just sections of the design.

The data acquisition challenge

PLM systems allow customers to store and manage an unlimited amount of data, yet this does not solve the information acquisition challenge. Obtaining compliance data is a major issue faced by businesses. They are still at the mercy of vendors to supply compliance data. Some suppliers have taken an active role to provide their customers with necessary compliance information, while others have not. Gathering data and analyzing parts can be a time-consuming and expensive task for suppliers. Since environmental regulations are subject to change, and allowable percentages of hazardous substances may differ for each specification set, manufacturers require a complete record (metadata) of material composition that reveals the exact amount of chemical elements and their compounds used in each supplied item.

Complicating matters even further is the lack of data delivery standards used by vendors. Content, format, and delivery mechanisms may differ from vendor to vendor. For manufacturers to accurately report and analyze products for compliance, data collected from various suppliers must be normalized. In an effort to gather data from various vendors in a consistent format, manufacturers are turning to content service providers.

Content service providers can save manufacturers from the excessive time spent on researching and acquiring the increasing amount of data that has to be sourced from the myriad of suppliers. In addition, content providers can alleviate the pains of analyzing and standardizing the data.

A complete solution

Accessing accurate data along with an effective means to manage and share this information among product development team members is an ideal path for manufacturers trying to build compliant products. Tightly integrating PLM with content services gives companies a complete, cost-effective solution for meeting compliance. Businesses that are looking to PLM to support their RoHS efforts may want to consider a vendor that has partnered with a provider who is experienced in sourcing and normalizing information for RoHS requirements.

For example, companies such as Omnify Software and EMA Design Automation have partnered to bridge the gap for manufacturers in achieving RoHS compliance. Jointly, they provide a complete compliance solution from component sourcing to management of the data. EMA collects and normalizes the pertinent component-level data and the Omnify system provides a centralized database to catalog all parts, store the associated documentation and enable easy report generation, in addition to the traditional PLM features of BOM and Change Management. Omnify’s unique ability to classify the complete chemical composition of a part also offers manufacturers the flexibility to adapt as existing regulations evolve and new regulations emerge.

Having access to a single resource that ties the content acquisition with the content management will provide manufacturers with the tools they need to fully comply with regulations while maintaining an efficient product development process.

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