The days of RoHS are officially upon us. Most environment compliance regulations such as EU RoHS, China RoHS, and California RoHS have already started to take effect and the trend is spreading worldwide. With diverging scopes and implementation, the introduction of each new regulation further strains existing resources.

Thus, managing RoHS compliance with limited time and resources is a challenge that the entire electronic manufacturing industry face. In developing a systematic approach towards environmental compliance management, many of our customers have identified a series of best practices that brings fast results.

The 4 Steps of RoHS Management Best Practice

1. Data Cleansing/BOM Scrubbing - Most product BOMs are dirty, consisting of duplicate and inconsistent part data. Most companies have come to realize that spending compliance efforts on dirty data is a major waste of both resources and time. Therefore, data cleansing has become the foundation of successful compliance management. BOM scrubbing procedures involve verifying the consistency and accuracy of manufacturer names and part numbers and the integrity of all line item information. However, as a typical BOM may take anywhere from weeks to months to go through, this process has become a major hurdle for many companies.

With a database consisting of over 24 million parts from 2000+ manufacturers, GreenSoft Technology's Data Management Service (DMS) reduces BOM cleansing from months to a matter of days. More about DMS.

2. Data Collection For Commodity Parts - After a BOM is prepped for compliance management, most organizations often choose to give the task of collecting compliance information to those who are already familiar with current suppliers - the Procurement team. This usually creates a dilemma as Procurement, more often than not, lacks the knowledge needed to match a specific part with the material composition information that suppliers are able to provide.

Material composition information on over 8 million parts is readily available in GreenSoft Technology’s IDR database and is available for search using a wide range of parameters. It only takes minutes to match and download material composition info and associated supporting documents. IDR not only takes the guessing out of data collection, but will also cut down your compliance management time significantly. More about IDR.

3. Data Collection For Customized Parts - Apart from collecting material composition information on commodity parts, you also need to worry about the collection effort for customized parts. Ideally, suppliers would submit accurate material composition information in no time. However, in reality, this has never happened. Some of them will send you something in weeks and some of them will take months. You would also need to monitor the progress of the collection process and examine the validity of what's already been submitted. You need to verify whether the supporting documents are adequate and double-check whether they are truly in compliance with different regulations. Last but not least, you need to manage EU RoHS exemptions for these customized parts and make declarations, without exemptions, for China RoHS.

Want to automate RoHS document exchange? Green Supplier Manager lets your suppliers submit all documents to one central location and lets you manage and review documents with ease. More about GSM.

4. Compliance Validation/Declaration - Having compliance data alone will not give you any insight into the actual compliance status of your products. A sophisticated information system is necessary to manage exemption updates, determine BOM compliance status instantly with or without the consideration of 2nd sources, and capture all this information in a declaration report.

GreenSoft Technology’s Green Compliance Manager is a flexible software solution that can help you to determine compliance status on component and products levels, manage exemption updates, and generate IPC-1752 and China RoHS declaration reports in just a few minutes. More about GCM.