What Sticks and What Doesn’t?
By Ed Sperling -- EDN, April 1, 2005
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| Ed Sperling Editor-in-Chief |
The reality of the regulations regarding the restriction on hazardous substances is starting to set in, and the picture isn’t pretty for a most of the industry.
Companies fall roughly into three categories on this issue. For each of them there are challenges that could affect their businesses, no matter how ambitious their compliance efforts. Some will come out ahead, some will get slammed, and right now no one knows which will be on the winning or losing side.
Those that are furthest along started down this path years ago. Texas Instruments, for example, has been working on this issue for the past decade. The problem isn’t with them. It’s with all the components that may be used in conjunction with TI’s parts -- not to mention the solder that may be used to put TI’s parts on a board.
Just as a company is only as good as its weakest partner, an OEM is only as good as its weakest supplier. If parts don’t solder effectively onto a board, or if some parts contain lead while others don’t, then nothing gets sold until all the problems are fixed -- or worse yet, the end product gets recalled and the customer begins looking for an entire new roster of suppliers.
The second group of companies is working on the lead-free initiative. Some of them may be in compliance by the time the regulations are in place. Some will be in compliance by the date that the RoHS regulations take effect, which is July 1, 2006. But the closer they get to that date, the more likely that products will be designed and built using older parts containing the banned substances. Product cycles may be three months these days, but products a lot older than that are sitting in the supply chain.
Adding greatly to the confusion are companies that have agreed to comply without changing their part numbers. Word on the street is that they’re already getting some of the older parts back, and they can’t tell what’s what. So how do they test in batches of hundreds of thousands? Apparently no one knows the answer to that question.
Finally, there are some companies that literally haven’t paid any attention to the RoHS rules, believing they are strictly aimed at the European market. With China poised to follow, and states like California looking at its own set of regulations, it’s likely that this will quickly become a global effort. Never mind that leaded solder is only about 1 percent lead and that more heat is needed to bond parts using non-leaded solder. The rules are in motion, and they’re likely to stick.
Companies that have ignored the rules -- unless they’re creating parts for a very specific market such as the military, which actually wants leaded components because they’re a proven entity -- could well be out of business within a couple of years. In the components business, the next shakeout could well be due to environmental rules.
The challenges ahead on RoHS are enormous. Even after the deadline, it may take years to sort out who’s doing what and whether quality suffers significantly without the presence of lead. But the rules have been created all the same, and over the 15 months all sorts of fireworks will begin in this industry.
The only question now is who will get burned and who will benefit. That has yet to be decided, and the answer may be far less obvious than it appears.
