Are Two Standards Better Than One?
By Rob Spiegel -- EDN, February 9, 2006
A new standard for declaring materials content of electronic components has surfaced, backed by a high-profile consortium of electronics industry leaders. The Eco-Compliance Declaration (ECD) Exchange Form complements the IPC-1752 standard that will soon be published by the IPC – Association Connecting Electronics Industries.
The open-source ECD was developed by BoardwalkTech of Palo Alto, Calif. The standard allows component suppliers to send their materials content data to their OEM and contract manufacturing (CM) customers in a standard format. Product manufacturers need the data to prove they have taken all reasonable measure to make sure their products headed for Europe are RoHS compliant.
Companies belonging to the industry consortium that supports ECD include National Electronic Distribution Association (the trade group that represents authorized distributors), HP, Solectron, Kemet, Future Electronics, and Agile, among others.
The major difference between ECD and IPC-1752 is that ECD is based on Excel, while the IPC standard conveys data in a PDF format. Both use XML format for exchanging data.
“Ultimately, the standard IPC-1752 should define what data is conveyed,” explained JB Hollister, principle of consulting company, JB Hollister Associates, which helped develop ECD with BoardwalkTech. “The difference with ECD is we use an Excel tool while IPC-1752 uses a PDF tool.”
Hollister noted that most companies already have their materials content data in spreadsheets, so the conversion to the Excel-based ECD will be fairly straightforward. “In Excel, this becomes a simple compliance format,” said Hollister. “These companies are already importing and exporting well in Excel, so they can easily deal with the data.”
The ECD consortium chose and Excel-based tool because Excel is already widely used as a format for sending materials content information. “We’re expecting that 100 percent of the requests we get for materials content data are in Excel,” said Mary Carter-Berrios, technical product manger at Kemet Corp. in Simpsonville, S.C. “ECD also writes to XML, and that can be transmitted.”
Carter-Berrios noted that small- to medium-size companies in particular will be drawn to ECD rather than IPC-1752. “Small companies are not ready for PDF files,” she said. “If you don’t have an IT infrastructure, it’s a lot of work to support IPC-1752. The BoardwalkTech [ECD] tool allows you to customize it to meet your business needs.”
Those involved with ECD are quick to point out the standard does not compete with IPC-1752. “ECD is an open-source Excel-based version of 1752,” explained Michael Kirschner, president of San Francisco-based consulting company Design Chain Associates. “The Excel version is a more powerful form than the PDF form.”
He noted that IPC-1752 accomplishes two basic tasks: “It defines the XML format for the data and it defines the form so you can get data in and out of the format. ECD does the same thing, only Excel has more flexibility. Otherwise they’re the same thing.”
IPC-1752 is due for release this month. “It will be complete and available in February,” said David Bergman, VP of standard technology at IPC in Bannock, Ill. “We have enough votes as an accredited standard developer. It has passed.”
Bergman added that some companies are already using the standard. “They started using it in draft form for months. That tells me there is an extremely high demand.”
