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There are important components of an effective and timely transition to compliance:

Assign accountability: Create a multi-functional team. The make-up of this team will vary depending upon the size and complexity of your organization but some important considerations are:

• Senior Sponsorship: Have clear lines of communication to senior leadership and ability to make decisions on issues that affect your business.
• Multi-discipline: Bring subject matter expertise from across your organization to ensure all issues are addressed and communicated in the most effective way. Might include: Design Engineering, Procurement, Logistics, Manufacturing, Quality, Sales, IT.
• Local Accountability: If your company operates across multiple sites or geographies assign accountability for local training and implementation of your compliance strategy at each location.

Build your plan: There are still many areas of uncertainty associated with the transition of the EU Directives into legislation, which are a challenge for the entire supply chain. However, with timelines approaching, it is important to build a scalable plan that:

• Is scalable to more (or less) restrictive changes in legislation
• Reflects your business' risks and needs
• Recognizes that transition is more complex than the final compliant state in the development of systems and processes so that, where possible, this can be reduced post-compliance

Monitor and interpret legislation and its impact on your business: The landscape of environmental regulations around the world is evolving and it is important to keep up to date, assess the impact of changes on your business and consult with your own legal counsel, if necessary.

To assist in these efforts, Arrow has posted a comprehensive review of the legislation in our Legislation Update section.  This section will be continually updated as additional developments from around the world occur.

Develop & Implement Lead-free Manufacturing Capability: Lead-Free solders typically melt at higher temperatures than current lead-based versions.

Typical Melting points of lead-free alloys:

• Tin-Copper 227 C°
• Tin Silver 221 C°
• Silver Tin Copper 217 C°
• Tin Zinc 199 C°
• Tin Bismuth 138 C°

Solder reflow temperatures will be significantly higher. Surface mount SnPb (m.pt. 183°C) is usually reflowed at ~210°C, tin-silver copper would be reflowed at temperatures ranging from 245°C to 260°C, depending on board size, complexity, thermal mass of board and components and reflow oven quality.

Both the components and PCBs must tolerate these elevated temperature levels.

There are many other technical and commercial considerations to take into account. Further information is available from a number of solder equipment manufacturers and industry associations.

Evaluate components, sub-assemblies and materials in your product and identify compliant replacements: Making decisions on what data you need and identifying a reliable source of component information is important. For some customers, simple "Yes/No" lead-free and RoHS-compliant information can be sufficient in helping assess components on BOMs and compliancy to the EU directive. Other customers may decide to take the approach of understanding the material composition of all the products they use in depth. This would require a richer set of data and tools to manage the issue.

Certain characteristics of components may also have to be considered. Some are heat sensitive and are damaged if the reflow temperature exceeds their maximum temperature capability. ICs have moisture sensitivity levels and these may change to lower levels with lead-free reflow profiles.

Visit our section on gathering RoHS component compliance information to learn more about the steps to creating a plan for requesting, collecting and storing materials content data on the specific components in your BOMs.  

Address the ability of your business processes and systems to track compliance status and manage the transition: Review key business processes where tracking, monitoring or recording compliance status are necessary. It is also important to consider the implications of challenges associated with differing supplier part numbering policies.