Legislation is driving the need for engineering data management.

RoHS and WEEE are forcing many changes in the way we specify, design and build electronic products. However, the extent and depth of the change may be more than you think. With the help of a greater abundance of RoHS-compliant parts and alternate soldering techniques, we're all getting better at creating environmentally friendly products. But if we use all the right parts, and keep the RoHS banned substances out of the production process, will we end up with RoHS-compliant products that we can sell in Europe?

If you're part of the engineering development team, you'll probably say, "Yes, because we met the requirements." On the other hand, if you're a lawyer, you probably gave the correct answer, which is, "Our product is only compliant if we can prove it meets the requirements." In your case, the proof is in the documentation and engineering data, which is where engineering data management plays a critical role.

Engineering data management, or EDM, allows product development teams to efficiently record, manage and report the design and development data used in the creation of products. For simpler designs in a pre-RoHS/WEEE world, this could be accomplished in any number of ways, including using engineering notebooks, file cabinets - or sometimes not at all. Often this creates a disconnect between engineering and manufacturing, which becomes increasingly problematic with the increased amount of data that must pass between the two teams for developing compliant products. EDM organizes and automates much of this, allowing development teams to effectively manage greater amounts of data than ever before.

A good example of this is the ever-important bill of materials (BOM). Many companies still use manual or paper processes and hand-edit BOMs. Each time a new version of the board comes through, designers must create a new version of the BOM. Not only is this time-consuming, but it's also error prone. In a properly implemented EDM environment, the parts added from the mechanical assembly are saved so that BOM creation is an automatic process. This ensures that each version of the BOM is created or modified quickly and is fully complete and accurate. This includes mechanical parts and electrical parts at the assembly level, eliminating the need to hand-edit deliverable documents. This key element will in turn increase the reliability and predictability of the overall design process. Until a stable, reliable library process is defined, the higher-level PCB process cannot be predictable and consistent, which is the end goal for most development teams.

Basic RoHS Data Requirements

It is clear that the amount of data requiring management is growing quickly. For starters, we need to track whether each part is RoHS-compliant, yes or no. If it's not compliant, is there an alternate part defined from the same vendor? Many times, Web sites will report that their previous part number was abc100, and the new RoHS compliant part is abc100-g. This is the easy case where determining compliance is simply Web lookup, and the data storage problem is simply a flag.

Sometimes, however, manufacturers don't give an alternate, but will often provide planned availability. In that case, they might show that the RoHS-compliant version will be available after March 31, 2006. You need to be able to manage this part based on that date, because many of these are not marked RoHS compliant, so you can't really tell by looking at them. You need to understand this part number is compliant only if it was purchased after the change date, and you want your EDM system to make this easy. Many existing internal systems don't understand the required concept of effectivity.

Does the manufacturer provide a certificate of compliance? If yes, you want to download and save that certificate of compliance as part of your "due diligence" strategy. It is one of the key pieces of information that you'll want to provide to the individual EU country in case you are audited. You should check-in these documents against the individual manufacturer's part number so that they are easy to retrieve.

Another critical item may be a material declaration sheet defining exactly what and how much of the toxic substances are present in a particular component. The requirement for this document is typically defined by the member country that is performing the audit, but could also result from many other variables, including who bought your product.

While collecting these important RoHS items, you can also get a manufacturer's datasheet for future reference or documentation. This may also be required in an audit. Manufacturers' datasheets do change over time, and it's good to have an audit trail to compare against what was actually built into the system.

Figure 1 shows an example of data that you're going to want to keep and manage. Whether or not the parts are RoHS compliant and whether or not they are lead-free - those are two really different questions. What exactly is the manufacturer package ID? Details like moisture sensitivity level (MSL) are very important to the manufacturing team. Total weight maybe be required as part of the reports for WEEE compliance.

Perhaps the best example of an extremely important item in this table is the peak reflow temperature. Many RoHS-compliant parts do not solder at 260°C. Doing so can create undue stress to the package or damage the die. The maximum recommended soldering temperature may be 235°C C or 240°C. A 235°C peak reflow package does not belong in an assembly being processed at 250°C. This can cause severe problems in manufacturing, and almost certainly future reliability issues. Some manufacturers handle this well by not labeling a part RoHS-compliant if it cannot be soldered at 260°C. Since each manufacturer has its own definition for compliance, you need to track peak reflow temperature as a separate item and pass this information along to manufacturing.

Table 1 [PDF format] shows some of the over 100 fields of data that you should be managing. When you add that to the data shown in Figure 1 and the other information based on business rules necessary to store with the part, you're looking at 150 to 200 data fields per manufacturer's part number. If your internal part number has four substitutes, it may require greater than 600 data fields that didn't exist before. Prior to RoHS and WEEE your requirements could be met with about 15 data fields or so; now you're going to be carrying 600, and it's going to be developed on a manufacturing part number basis, not your internal part number basis. It's extremely important to be able to track and manage all of that data.

You also need to access data from other enterprise systems, such as ERP or PLM, and pull that data into your EDM system. Items of interest are product destination, product weight, the number of units shipped and the timing of the shipment. Some countries require monthly reporting, whereas others specify twice per year. You must reflect this data back into EDM along with necessary information from your enterprise systems for complete reporting.

Today, it's important to flag a part of an assembly or an internal part number as RoHS compliant. However, as more legislatures enact their own environmental compliance legislation, it will be important to expand your EDM and its understanding of those regulations. For instance, if you're selling into Japan, you're going to want to understand Japan Green, and you're going to want a JPGSSI-compliant flag. Additionally, many of the states in the U.S. are individually implementing restrictions, California being the first, starting in January 2007. This requires another set of flags. Then there's China RoHS down the road that's not yet fully defined. As environmental legislation evolves, it is imperative to ensure that you can easily document whether or not your products are compliant in Europe, California, Alberta, China, Japan, Malaysia and any other market necessary.

Plus, the whole European RoHS initiative will almost certainly change over the next four years. Proposals for changes to the restrictions are already being reviewed by the Technical Adaptation Committee (TAC). There are no guarantees that RoHS will be limited to six banned substances in the future, or that any exemptions will remain in place. Therefore, it is important that you don't hard-code compliance definitions into any system. That would be expensive to rework, in time and money.

Putting it Together

Figure 2 shows an EDM suite that can help you build compliant designs. It shows a collection of tools and services that help alleviate some of the problems caused by environmental legislation compliance. The bottom row shows various components that feed into the EDM system.

One of the key items is RoHS/WEEE content generation. Component compliance information must originate with the manufacturer. Many online services actually provide a portion of this content, but it is very inconsistent in exactly what data is stored and what part numbers are covered. With any online data source that offers existing RoHS compliance information, you must verify how much of your BOM will be covered. With a more customized methodology, 100% BOM coverage is more reasonable.

EDM should also provide document control and management, so you can check in all the necessary documents against each part number. That way when you roll up a report for an audit, you can automatically extract all necessary documents.

Since RoHS/WEEE compliance is mainly concerned with the whole product, not just the components, the EDM system needs to offer configuration management. Just as you manage parts, you will also manage modules, sub-assemblies and different product variations. You will track different versions of the mechanical and electrical data, the firmware, and the documentation. With all this, your reporting can be flexible enough to handle any product configuration for any market or territory.

Environmental compliance reporting is a very complex issue. Some countries require reporting to be delivered in the local language or currency. Additionally, each country has different filing deadlines. Automating the data collection and report generation as part of EDM reduces the complexity to a more manageable, predictable process.   PCD&M

Sidebar: Lead and Legislation

There are 32 European Union members: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.

Each country has its own:

• Unique WEEE and RoHS law
• Registration organization
• Enforcement
• Compliance options
• Take-back options
• Language(s) of correspondence
• Costs and fees

This level of uncertainty and variance is part of what's driving the need for engineering data management.

In addition to four pending pieces of federal legislation, there are 27 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces with active or pending environmental compliance legislation. Until some standardization occurs, ensuring compliance in each state and province is going to be very challenging.

Alan Diamond is consulting services manager at EMA Design Automation (www.ema-eda.com). He can be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

RESOURCES

EMA Design Automation will moderate a panel at PCB West 2006 that addresses many RoHS issues. "Lead-Free Panel: The Designer Toolkit for RoHS and WEEE Compliance" will take place March 28 at the Santa Clara (CA) Convention Center.