Getting greener

As the transition to RoHS compliance gathered pace last year, a feeling of relief might have been detected across the electronics industry. In the UK at least, there is evidence of business as usual – thanks to UK ‘enforcer’ National Weights and Measure Laboratory, whose ‘softly softly’ approach coached companies through the compliance process. However, it isn’t possible to say that most companies are compliant or that RoHS hasn’t had a dramatic impact. But the real impact of RoHS is only just being felt in some sectors. Initially, companies that sought to comply with RoHS ahead of the deadline experienced difficulties sourcing compliant parts. Then, with the deadline looming, concern was voiced that excess non compliant stock would lead to expensive and wasteful write offs. In reality, components for the increasingly powerful consumer segment quickly made the transition, whilst the supply chain’s inventory control kept a tight rein on non compliant stock volumes. As a result, apprehension has built about limited supplies of non compliant inventory, with the greatest effect in areas where RoHS’ impact was predicted to have the least impact – in exempt industries such as aerospace, defence, medical equipment and telecommunications, where systems typically have high development costs, long availability and require decades of support.