By Malcolm Wheatley
Manufacturing Business Technology
November, 2005

Impending European legislation to more closely control use of hazardous substances in manufactured products is winning plaudits from environmentalists. Lawmakers in other countries have taken note, and a raft of copycat legislation is expected.

As manufacturers on both sides of the Atlantic work to respond, software companies are getting in on the act. In recent weeks, Omnify Software and Arena Solutions joined the ranks of product life-cycle management (PLM) vendors offering solutions to assist manufacturers with compliance.

The Restriction on the Use of Certain Hazardous Substances in Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (i.e., the RoHS Directive), scheduled to take effect July 2006, requires manufacturers to ensure products intended for European markets don't contain more than minute concentrations of six banned substances. But the substances in question-lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavelant chromium, polybrominated biphenyls, and polybrominated diphenyl ethers are already in wide use. Lead, for example, is a common constituent of solder.

American manufacturers should probably be more welcoming to RoHS than they realize, says Pamela Gordon, president of Technology Forecasters, Alameda, Calif. "In the U.S., federal requirements governing the inclusion of hazardous substances in manufactured products are less stringent than those in Europe-which is prompting individual states to think about developing their own requirements," she says.

The result: a waste of effort, and a hindrance to trade, Gordon charges. While the European Union has put in force harmonized legislation that stretches across Europe, American manufacturers can only hope that the requirements imposed by individual states don't diverge too much from each other-and those in force in Europe. "From the manufacturer's perspective, harmonized legislation is the way to go," says Gordon.

But if Europe's legislation is harmonized, its enforcement may not be well coordinated. Already, says Peter West-VP of marketing at collaborative supply chain portal vendor RiverOne, which has RoHS-enabled its own offering-alarming differences in interpretation of Europe's requirements are showing up, prompted in part by a lack of specificity in the rules themselves, and by apparent differences of opinion between European countries' enforcers as to what exactly constitutes compliance.

Some RiverOne users are requiring material compliance declarations for every purchase order they place, says West, while others are just obtaining a "master declaration" and holding it on file. Still other customers are opting to buy from a sole distributor, and then relying on the distributor for compliance proof. Finally, some are relying on online compliance databases.

"These are all very different interpretations of RoHS, and they can't all be correct," says West. "Some real clarity is required about where responsibility for compliance resides."

As the date for RoHS compliance draws nearer, many manufacturers will be hoping that clarity is achieved soon.

© 2002-2006 Omnify Software