Providing lead-free data
By Purchasing Staff -- Purchasing, 4/7/2005 6:00:00 AM
As the European ban on the use of lead in electronics equipment approaches, electronics distributors say they are serving as a kind of clearinghouse for information about which suppliers are building lead-free parts. Under the Restriction on the Use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) legislation, all equipment being sold in Europe must be lead-free by July 2006.
“Customers are looking to distributors for information about which parts are RoHS complaint,” says Robin Gray, executive president of the National Electronic Distributors Association. “Distributors are also segregating inventory.”
Some manufacturers are making both lead-free and leaded products at least for awhile so inventory has to be segregated. In other cases, some component manufacturers are making lead-free parts while others have not.
P.J. Murphy, vice president of sales at passives specialist Sager Electronics, Weymouth Mass. says the role of distributors in RoHS is to educate OEM and electronics manufacturing services providers about which products are compliant because there is a wide range in the degree of compliance among manufacturers.
“Today AMP has 5,000 RoHS compliant parts, tomorrow they will have 5,100, the day after 5,200. They continue to evolve. Other suppliers like Phoenix Contact, based in Germany were compliant years ago. They are leading the pack. Other companies just haven’t grasped the magnitude of the situation. They will be left at the curb if they don’t get their act together soon,” says Murphy.
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