For manufacturers, meeting the European Union's July 1 Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) compliance deadline was the easy part. The tough part will come from the effort to maximize the strategic, competitive benefits.
Start by realizing that meeting the RoHS deadline was the beginning, not the end of the compliance process. Look at compliance as an on-going process, not a project, emphasizes Ken Amann, director of research with CIMdata, an Ann Arbor, Mich.-based analyst firm.
For manufacturers, the rapidly emerging compliance "game" can bring new competitive success if they play it right, says Tom Maurer, global marketing director, high tech and electronics, with UGS, a provider of product lifecycle management (PLM) solutions. UGS and other PLM providers, such as Dassault's ENOVIA MatrixOne, Agile, Arena and Ariba, see PLM as a key factor in the compliance equation, observes Amann.
Maurer says the winners will be those manufacturers who recognize that hazardous substance directives like RoHS are also business change agents that require new corporate-wide strategies, not just compliance reporting. PLM providers, says Amann, have an edge because their solution concept is a strategic approach to dealing with products, from conception to disposal in the field.
Companies that view environmental compliance as only a reporting issue face recurring costs and increased risk that arises from late-term changes, manufacturing process delays and slow market launches, Maurer observes. Without new strategies, pre-compliance business processes will endanger customer satisfaction as well as market retention and growth. Some of those new compliance-inspired strategies, he notes, involve and coordinate functions from product design to marketing.
Current And Pending Restricted Substances Regulations
For manufacturers of electrical and electronic equipment, restricted substances compliance reaches far beyond EU RoHS. Below is a list of regulations that will go into effect over the following year.
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