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The Green Challenge
November 30, 2012 | Richard Ayes, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 8 minutes
Editor's Note: This article originally appeared in the October 2012 issue of SMT Magazine.EMS provider SMTC Corporation is a pioneer in SMT, fiber optics assembly, and lead-free materials processing. At the core of the company’s manufacturing services is printed circuit board assembly (PCBA) and testing, in addition to offering the latest advanced materials and finishes to improve product performance.
With more than 25 years of experience working in partnership with top OEMs, SMTC consistently delivers and exceeds customer expectations in product quality and maintains high quality in product design and manufacturing. These factors are among the reasons why Frost & Sullivan honored SMTC with the 2012 Global Product Quality Leadership Award in the Electronics Manufacturing Service industry. Frost noted SMTC’s continued excellence in product design, reliability, usability, and performance, which set the manufacturing bar high for other market participants. Not to mention here is the company’s continuing adherence to government legislations and directives aimed at promoting environmentally responsible manufacturing.
In an interview with I-Connect007, Brian Morrison, engineering manager at SMTC’s Markham, Ontario facility, responsible for process, test, and development, discusses the impact of green manufacturing on the industry and the challenges that EMS companies and others in the electronics manufacturing supply chain face as they aim to comply with such directives. I-Connect007: RoHS is well known, but of what other regulations and legislations should PCB fabricators, assemblers, and designers should be aware?
Brian Morrison: Including RoHS, the following regulations and legislations should be reviewed in compliance with industry green initiatives: Directive on Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE); End of Life Vehicles (EOLV); Acts of Pollution Control in Electronics Production (China RoHS); Electronic Waste Recycling Act of 2003 (California); and Registration, Evaluation, Authorization, and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH).
I-Connect007: Environmental legislation worldwide is causing a total rethink of product design and manufacturing processes. How do these different regulations, aimed at providing a “greener” manufacturing environment, impact your manufacturing process when it comes to raw materials, product quality, and product design?
Morrison: Raw materials both at the component and substrate levels require extra scrutiny with regard to both internal and external composition in terms of content of restricted materials, process compatibility (high temperature, backward compatibility), and need for higher performance materials (higher Td, Tg). Alternate finishes and materials, as well as compatibility, need to be determined (matte tin, immersion silver, SAC alloys, Sn100, etc.). There is increased need for supplier disclosure, compliance and exceptions, end-of-life (EOL) management and phase dates for green conversion, including cost and availability considerations.
Product quality relies on the compatibility of the components, chemistry, and process to provide a highly reliable, quality end product. Termination and surface finishes, maximum component resistance, increased MSL requirements, increased delamination risk, and mixed process conditions add increased pressures on quality. Long-term reliability is a concern for safety-critical products and extensive testing and accelerated life testing are required for quality assurance.
Product design requires intimate knowledge of the BOM life cycle, process conditions, and transition needs to support regulatory compliance. Hybrid and mix condition strategies to support current and future product life cycle support require careful component selection. A good understanding of current and future regulatory pressures and changes including exception end dates and process compatibility all need to be considered during the product design. EOL may drive conversion and re-design activities much sooner than anticipated if green initiatives are not carefully considered during design.
I-Connect007: What about costs?
Morrison: Greener processes typically require higher temperatures, use of precious metals, or phase-out of materials--with cut-in dates driving increased component and assembly costs. High-reliability products typically remain with leaded supply chains due to proven performance or under exceptions; as lead-free products are in higher demand and availability, cost and component availability become issues to maintain leaded production and may force designs to convert to green sooner than desired.
I-Connect007: How important are such regulations and what benefits do they bring to the industry and the consumer? Morrison: These regulations drive needed changes in the industry to ensure socially responsible manufacturing from design to after-life support. Regulations such as RoHS and WEEE address introduction of hazardous materials into our environment. REACH drives continued refinement and restrictions to further control toxic materials into the mass market. Aftermarket recycling and disposal requirements as well as service life management add complexity to product compliancy, but they lead to responsible manufacturing and ownership throughout the industry.
I-Connect007: What challenges have you experienced when dealing with such regulations? Morrison: Data management and availability of information required business system updates, changes, and information service partnerships to be formed early on to provide the scale and visibility to the impact the regulations had on us and our customers. Increased communication with both customers and suppliers was important to provide visibility to new requirements, impact, and changes required to comply, so are efforts into transition plans, qualification and phase-in to ensure seamless supply as customers ramp from leaded processes to lead-free processes.
I-Connect007: What can you say about the different industry regulations in different territories? For instance, RoHS, REACH, and WEEE began in Europe. Then we have the China RoHS. How does the plethora of such regulations affect manufacturing strategies?
Morrison: Variations in regulations add complexity to management, particularly with regard to declaration, compliance management, and additional substance tracking for each region. There are some commonalities between the regulations related to the restricted substances targeted, which provide some synergy in data management. Complexity is driven primarily by the exceptions management, reporting differences and requirements, compliancy markings and declarations.
I-Connect007: How do these regulations vary? For instance, European RoHS compared to China RoHS?
Morrison: The restricted substances remain a common theme among the EU and China regulations, and the variations are primarily with regard to the exceptions, industry sectors targeted, and declaration format and content requirements.
I-Connect007: Are any manufacturers still not wholly complying with such regulations? And if not, why is this happening?
Morrison: I still believe a number of manufacturers are not fully complying with the regulations, primarily due to the availability of information and data management requirements. Information is commonly presented in inconsistent formats and information on new restricted substances, in some cases, requires additional testing and lags with the changing regulations. There are significant declaration requirements required to ensure the product is in compliance with the regulation. Gathering of this information can be a costly endeavour and for smaller companies that may not have the necessary resources or budget to support this internally, partnering with companies specializing in compliance information just makes sense. System management and product life cycle management software also is required to maintain and manage this information once collected. Validation of component, chemistry and process can be very time consuming to ensure the product is fully compliant.
I-Connect007: The RoHS Recast was officially announced last year. What impact will this have in your process and design?
Morrison: The main impact was a revalidation of our processing materials and the addition of substance attributes to add to our existing compliance declaration. A higher focus on halogen-free materials and the introduction of substances of very high concern (SVHC) has driven some changes in manufacturing materials, raw components, and reporting requirements. Restrictions on brominated substances was communicated early to our supply base during the initial onset of RoHS and have been essentially eliminated, these regulatory requirements have been reinforced.
I-Connect007: Do you see RoHS becoming a more REACH-like directive?
Morrison: The industry is looking for standardization in the regulations to simplify and consolidate the requirements to help manage these incremental changes, which drive constant system, strategy, and reporting changes in the industry. This all translates into cost, which can be better contained and understood through standardization. Common threads in these upcoming regulations certainly appear more in line with REACH directives.
I-Connect007: Do you think RoHS, at some point, will become a CE-mark directive?
Morrison: It would appear that way, and it would make sense to do so to consolidate these requirements under one underlying regulation and body. The implications broaden the declaration requirements and responsibility of the manufacturer for the conformity of the product with a higher focus on control.
I-Connect007: What are the challenges when it comes to compliance?
Morrison: System management, data integrity, and declaration management have been the primary challenges to comply. Defining and redefining the scope, risk, and compliance issues early and communicating compliancy information and action plans have been challenging. Incremental substance restrictions have driven existing restricted substance control measures to be updated to comply.
I-Connect007: Do you expect more regulations?
Morrison: Yes. Although I don’t expect the intent of the regulations to be different, I do expect an evolution with the addition of more restricted substances and adoption of requirements by different regions. North American regulations are the next natural progression, with California leading the charge.
I-Connect007: What will be the next challenge for the EMS industry pertaining to green electronics?
Morrison: The next challenge will be continued compliancy to REACH and review of additional SVHC and impact. Also, the potential CE marking directive integrating with RoHS, the conformity requirements, the upcoming RoHS amendments, and impact of expansion of the existing directives and sectors.
I-Connect007: Any final comments?
Morrison: With increased regulations, the need for efficiency and effective information standards are becoming more and more important. We have embraced industry standards such as the IPC-1752 Material Declaration Management standard to simplify data collection between our customers and suppliers; however, the adoption has been low. Looking to the future, such standards across the industry will help further effectively support green initiative compliancy requirements.
Brian Morrison, engineering manager at SMTC Manufacturing in Markham, Ontario, is directly responsible for process, test, and development, focused on new customer and new product introduction. Morrison aided in the development of the company’s corporate technology roadmap, systems and processes, value engineering, environmental management, and manufacturing initiatives to drive lower cost, flexible solutions, and manufacturing innovation.