Electronic equipment manufacturers are facing a massive increase in the amount of data they need to gather from their suppliers on the substances used in their products.
The European Commission is expected to add at least four more substances to the RoHS Directive, whilst Article 33 of the REACH Regulation will require all manufacturers to provide customers with information on whether their products contain >0.1% of any ‘substances of very high concern’ on the REACH ‘candidate list’ of substances. The first Candidate List will contain up to 12 substances and the requirement to disclose information on these substances is likely to start in October 2008.
As the number of substances continues to increase, it will become increasingly difficult for manufacturers to maintain their own independent systems for gathering this data from each of their suppliers. Many suppliers will be unable to cope with supplying massive amounts of new data to each manufacturer on an individual basis.
Believing that the most cost effective and efficient approach is for manufacturers to collaborate on a common process for gathering and sharing data from suppliers, ENVIRON and COCIR have launched the www.BOMcheck.net database system, which is said to reduce business costs by enabling suppliers to upload their substances declarations to one location for access by all participating manufacturers.
