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Helping Companies Comply with China RoHS Regulation
New module from Synapsis intended to reduce cost of compliance and minimize risk of compliance failures as Chinese environmental law takes effect


Spring House, PA — April 4, 2007 — Product lifecycle management solution provider Synapsis Technology has released software aimed at helping companies comply with China's new environmental regulations while reducing the cost of compliance.

Synapsis' EMARS environmental compliance solution now includes a China RoHS module designed to help companies comply with phase one of the Chinese regulation and prepare them for phase two. RoHS refers to the European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances, which places limits on the use of certain hazardous substances in electrical and electronic equipment. China has enacted similar legislation.

Companies that fail to comply with the Chinese regulation may soon be prevented from shipping products into that country. "We're finding that the number one compliance concern among manufacturers right now is China RoHS, particularly the disclosure and documentation requirements that went into effect this month," said Lonnie Gillihan, Synapsis' president. "China RoHS is bigger than E.U. RoHS ever was because the scope of the law includes more industries, companies and products."

Limits on Six Substances

The China RoHS regulation — officially called the "Management Methods for Controlling Pollution Caused by Electronic Information Products Regulation" — will require manufacturers to limit the use of six hazardous substances in their products: lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ether (PBDE), which are the same six substances specified in the E.U.'s RoHS directive.

However, unlike its European counterpart, which only recommends that companies disclose their products' material content, China RoHS requires disclosure in the form of a specific "x-and-o" chart. As described in China's industry standard document, "Marking for Control of Pollution Caused by Electronic Information Products" (SJ/T11364-2006), this chart must show the presence or absence of each of the six substances with respect to specified thresholds, broken down by part or subassembly.

Tapping into BOMs

Synapsis said its new EMARS China RoHS Solution enables users to generate an accurate declaration chart in the "x-and-o" format. EMARS users can generate a completed chart that reflects a product's composition in minutes, the solution provider said. No manual loading of product bills of material (BOMs) is required because BOMs can be accessed "as-is" from most major enterprise data systems, according to the solution provider.

Users also can perform rollups of complex, multi-level product BOMs into a single "x-and-o" chart. Users can configure chart rows to represent major subassemblies of the product, individual components or any grouping in between. In addition, companies can perform drill-down analysis on any "x-and-o" chart so that users can determine which supplier part or material is contributing to a compliance failure and why it is causing the failure, enabling users to take corrective action.
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