Article
July 26, 2006
ETI RoHS Policy and Implementation Plans
Our response to the RoHS (Restriction of Hazardous Substances) Directive pertaining to products shipped to member countries of the EU (European Union) is simple. Every product that ETI plans to continue selling will be RoHS compliant. This includes items purchased for resale or manufactured by ETI or that are currently exempt.
As the first step in implementing compliance, we formed the RoHS Committee. Members include persons from Corporate Management, Engineering, Sales, IT and Operations. Currently, this committee meets on an 'as required' basis. This will change to twice monthly in August.
The large number of ETI products and their high complexity makes RoHS compliance challenging. Note that only one non-compliant part means that the entire product is not RoHS. This simple fact makes meaningful scheduling difficult. Manufacturing processes and reliability also require consideration.
Safety testing is another issue causing scheduling uncertainty. Some component changes will require re-testing by UL, CSA or the equivalent NRTL (Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory). It often takes months to have UL open a project. The time required to do the testing and documentation can take additional months to schedule and complete.
Initial steps taken to comply with the RoHS Directive include the following:
- Setting up a committee to supervise the implementation of RoHS
- Decision to eventually make all continuing products RoHS compliant
- Modification of the Engineering Documentation System to include RoHS data for every component
- Decision to implement RoHS in a product by product in sequence
- Collecting complete RoHS data for each component
- Updating safety testing when required
Obviously, complying with the RoHS Directive is a major task for ETI. We hope to make the majority of our products compliant by next summer. The uncertainty involved makes this schedule an estimate. However, as this project progresses, scheduling accuracy will improve.
From time to time, RoHS status and other information will be published on the ETI Internet site www.networketi.com. After mid-August, Customer Service will be able to provide the RoHS status for specific products.