Companies to offer services aimed at helping manufacturing firms comply with directives
Fremont, CA — June 15, 2005 ¬— WCTbid, a provider of hosted, lifecycle inventory asset management solutions, today announced a partnership with the supply chain consulting firm Symphony Consulting aimed at combining the companies' knowledge of inventory asset management and WEEE and RoHS directives to help manufacturing companies comply with the European Union (EU) requirements.
Non-compliance with either the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) or the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) directives and can result in either penalties, product sales disruptions or the removal of manufacturers' products from the market place. As part of the agreement, both companies will engage in joint WEEE and RoHS compliance programs, co-marketing, sales and consulting activities.
It is our belief that the RoHS and WEEE directives will lead to disruptions in the supply chain, leading to revenue shortfall, excess inventory assets and higher costs for the unprepared, stated Bijan Dastmalchi, co-founder and president of Symphony Consulting. This is a partnership that blends the respective expertise of both companies and will help our customers mitigate supply chain transition risks.
This August 13, the WEEE initiative takes effect. Under the plan, the EU will hold electronic goods manufacturers accountable for recovering and recycling products. The massive initiative will impact most multi-national companies engaged in manufacturing and is expected to create considerable inventory issues. Companies unprepared will likely wind up directing significant unbudgeted sums to national collective take-back programs.
The RoHS directive affects electronic and electrical manufacturing companies that supply products to the EU. RoHS requires that any product containing any of six hazardous substances will have to be redesigned or withdrawn from the market by July 2006. Producers, defined as those whose brand names appear on the product, are fully accountable for ensuring that their products are compliant.
Both companies have already joined forces to offer a series of workshops around RoHS and WEEE to help all company stakeholders understand the regulations, map their products and processes to the optimum solution that meets cost, compliance and customer-focused objectives. The first in an ongoing series of workshops titled, Transitioning your supply chain for RoHS/WEEE Compliance, is slated to begin on Wednesday, June 22, 2005, in Santa Clara, Calif.
Launched last month, WCTbid unveiled a product recovery portal that handles mandated recycling requirements from collection request to final disposition to compliance reporting. WCTbid's WEEEcycle.com combines Web-based network management workflow and control, a compliance data repository, and a network of pre-qualified service providers in order to provide a recovery, remarketing and recycling network.
We're pleased to be partnering with Symphony Consulting's team of experts and look forward to collaborating with them, stated Alan Scroope, WCTbid's founder and CEO. We believe that our strengths in inventory asset management, supply chain management, RoHS and WEEE brings a combination of strategic consulting and ready solutions to customers and prospects in seek of help.
For more information on the supply chain impact of the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) regulations, see these SDCExec.com articles.
