RoHS, the Coherent way
By Barbara Jorgensen, Senior Editor -- EDN, June 27, 2006
For OEMs that still do most of their own manufacturing, complying with Europe’s Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) adds another layer of complexity onto an already onerous process.
OEMs that outsource can, to some extent, rely on their EMS partners to ensure a certain level of RoHS compliance. But for OEM companies such as Coherent, which does the bulk of its manufacturing in its 16 plants worldwide, compliance means that everything entering, being processed in and shipped from its factories is absolutely, positively lead-, mercury- and cadmium-free and flame-retardant. The laser-system manufacturer even uses an environmentally friendly paint for its company logo.
The company’s commitment to RoHS started more than two years ago when CEO John Ambroseo decided that the corporation would get firmly behind the effort no matter where its products end up. “It was clear the [RoHS] regulations were here to stay, but we also wanted to get behind a cause that was environmentally friendly,” says Gerald Barker, Coherent’s vice president of environmental initiatives. “At the same time, we wanted to make sure the company was prepared for this directive. Since we are a global company, there was no possibility that we would manufacture both compliant and noncompliant products.”
The compliance effort began in the company’s Santa Clara, Calif., facility. The first order of business was putting together processes for ensuring compliance and training employees in these processes and procedures. “Within 6 months we had 100 to 150 of our engineering staff trained to screen the component parts of our products and determine whether they were compliant or not. If not, they were asked to find compliant alternatives,” Barker says.
Coherent—like many large OEMs—has a set of qualified component suppliers it prefers to buy from. Many of them, Barker says, had green alternatives in the works or already on the market. Other didn’t. For the latter suppliers, Coherent first encouraged them to develop lead-free products. “For some, it took an extensive amount of work to get them into a ‘green’ state. In some cases we got our suppliers on board; in other cases we had to change suppliers,” Barker says. In some product categories this meant severe vendor reduction. “In some cases we now have one supplier where before we might have had four or five,” he says.
Coherent tackled one component product group at a time until all of its incoming materials were green. The company sources almost 50,000 component part numbers.
Next came the factory environment. Like many OEMs, Coherent used leaded solders for electromechanical and other assemblies. The company switched to lead-free solders, but it didn’t have to change manufacturing equipment since its existing equipment is adjustable to the higher melting temperatures unleaded solder requires.
Finally, the company had to modify its IT system so it could track and verify that all of the components used in the end products were RoHS-compliant. In some cases this meant verifying that 2,000 parts in a single bill of material met RoHS specs.
“We are heavily dependent on our suppliers for our compliance information,” Barker says. “In some cases we have used manufacturing engineering resources within the company so we can make a judgment on the likelihood of there being noncompliant materials in the product. If so, we can use an X-ray fluorescent tool to verify it.”
The $500 million company still has an RoHS to-do list. Because China’s environmental laws are likely to require that manufacturers verify that the raw materials in parts are environmentally friendly, Coherent is now pressing its suppliers for this “substance” reporting. And the company is aware that this first RoHS round has been a retro-fit of sorts: it took its existing product portfolio and figured out how to make it green. The next step, says Barker, is to design compliance into its products from the start. Coherent estimates it has spent $5 million to get this far.
Coherent tracked its progression from the beginning of its RoHS compliance efforts, shown in the timeframe here from August 2005 to January 2006. “Green Status Known” is the percentage of the product parts where Coherent knows whether or not the materials are RoHS complaint.
