-
- News
- Books
Featured Books
- smt007 Magazine
Latest Issues
Current IssueIPC APEX EXPO 2024 Pre-show
This month’s issue devotes its pages to a comprehensive preview of the IPC APEX EXPO 2024 event. Whether your role is technical or business, if you're new-to-the-industry or seasoned veteran, you'll find value throughout this program.
Boost Your Sales
Every part of your business can be evaluated as a process, including your sales funnel. Optimizing your selling process requires a coordinated effort between marketing and sales. In this issue, industry experts in marketing and sales offer their best advice on how to boost your sales efforts.
The Cost of Rework
In this issue, we investigate rework's current state of the art. What are the root causes and how are they resolved? What is the financial impact of rework, and is it possible to eliminate it entirely without sacrificing your yields?
- Articles
- Columns
Search Console
- Links
- Events
||| MENU - smt007 Magazine
REACH: Going Beyond The EU
July 9, 2008 |Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
June 1, 2008 quietly came and went with little hint of the significance of the date. June 1, 2008 is the date that Registration and pre-registration began for REACH and is also the official start of the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA). REACH is the new European Union (EU) Directive and Regulation that controls the production and use of chemicals. The letters stand for Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals. REACH is legally binding in the EU, but like other recent EU environmental regulations, REACH will have a major influence on how chemicals are approved for production and used in products outside the EU. For many in the electronics world, RoHS, the EU Directive on the Restriction of Hazardous Substances, was a European requirement that became a de facto international standard for electronic parts and products. Even with many exemptions including some major product categories, the supply chain changed and RoHS became the international norm. A similar occurrence will happen for REACH.
If you missed this date, you probably also missed June 30, 2008, the day the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) made available the draft list of the first 16 Substances of Very High Concern (SVHC). This list includes common phthalates and other chemicals commonly used by industry. If you sell products containing SVHCs, you must inform you EU customers if the SVHC is above the 0.1% weight threshold. The draft list will be final in October and is the start of the SVHC list that may contain more than 1,500 substances. What is most significant about the SVHC list is that it will become the chemical black list. Your customers will want assurance that the products you sell them do not contain SVHCs.
Getting back to REACH, what makes it different? REACH is based, in part, on the Precautionary Principle which puts the burden of responsibility on the producer of the chemical, also known as a substance, to prove that the substance is safe for the use. Shifting the burden of proof is very significant and not what we are used to in the U.S. The other major difference is use of the substance--this is where many U.S. companies will be very surprised that articles (the parts, the products, the things they sell) are now covered by REACH. If you have nothing to do with the EU, and you know your customers are not concerned that your product contains REACH regulated substances, relax. If you want your products to be marketable in the EU and/or your customers are going green, you need to pay careful attention to REACH.
If you don't have an active program for managing REACH, you need one if only to show you will not be financially impacted. After you have lost sales to competitors do you want to explain to your shareholders that you had dismissed REACH as immaterial? Or, may you lose sales because you can't provide European and other customers with the information they are requiring. In the EU, the customer who imports your product now has obligations under REACH. Are you ready to support your European customer or would you rather lose the sale? As happened with RoHS, you need to be prepared to answer non EU customers when they require the same information their EU counterparts are requiring.
REACH is complicated, but the impact on business will be pretty simple. If you are ready, you will succeed, if you are not, you will help your competitor succeed.
Stephen Greene is a Principal of Howland Greene Consultants LLC. You can reach him at greenesh@comcast.net.