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On February 13, 2003, two European Union directives went into effect. The
Restriction on the Use of Hazardous Substance (RoHS) directive limits the
use of six hazardous materials in electrical and electronic products, while
the Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directive deals
with the best practices for treating, recovering and recycling product waste.
By August 13, 2005, manufacturers were required to respond by implementing
a first round of compliance-related activities. On November 3, 2003, the European
Union’s End of Life Vehicles (ELV) regulation also went into effect,
providing guidelines for the re-use, recycling and disposal of cars, vans
and certain three-wheeled vehicles. This trend is not limited to Europe. By
the middle of 2006, 15 of the world’s largest economies, including China,
are expected to have similar legislation in place.
With these compliance-related requirements rapidly gaining ground, it seems
safe to say that developing environmentally compliant products is a must for
any company that competes in today’s global electronics marketplace.
In practical terms, this imperative translates into a requirement that product
makers capture and report on the material content of their product offerings.
In essence, this requirement arises from the need for product makers to verify
that their products are free of hazardous substances and are comprised of
components that are able to be widely recycled.
To address these overall compliance objectives while enabling product makers
to specifically comply with the ELV, WEEE and RoHS directives, UGS has integrated
Teamcenter with EMARS, Synapsis Technology’s Environmental Material
Aggregation and Reporting System. The result is a complete solution for the
end-to-end collection, management and reporting of environmental compliance
and material
content information.
This Teamcenter solution enables product developers to easily capture detailed
material and substance data that pertains to each of the components provided
by the product’s various suppliers. This data is captured in the form
of product requirements. Once the material and substance data is captured
by Teamcenter, product developers can relate
this data to a hierarchical model that fully defines a part in terms of its
underlying substances, material composition, technical materials, part composition
and environmental part data.
The Teamcenter solution is equally adept at handling newly manufactured parts,
as well as previously qualified parts. Rapid data capture is facilitated
through Teamcenter’s use of standard import/export facilities including
its support for common exchange standards. After the part model is in place,
product
developers are able to analyze compliance at multiple levels, including
at the manufactured material level (e.g., to determine RoHS compliance) and
at
higher levels (e.g., to facilitate multi-source worst case analyses or multi
level aggregations for entire BOMs).
Teamcenter’s ability to integrate milestones within its program planning
capabilities allows product developers to extend compliance analysis through
downstream lifecycle processes. As a result, products can be designed up front
for re-use and recycling. This enables enterprises to incorporate compliance
validation into standard processes driven by Teamcenter’s change management,
xCAD integration, part qualification and strategic sourcing solutions. In
addition, users can leverage standard interfaces, including RossettaNET XML,
Compliance Connect, IDMS and IPC-1752, to distribute a wide
variety of reports and configurable applications to:
• Design teams
•
Quality assurance teams
•
Government regulatory agencies
Visit ugs.com to learn about Teamcenter solutions for regulatory compliance,
or ask your UGS sales representative for more information about Teamcenter
Environmental Compliance.
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