CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive
13 August 2004
Company News
E2open Supports Development of Industry Data Standards to Enable Cost-Effective Compliance to Environmental Regulations
NEMI, IPC and NIST Workshop Focused on Furthering Data Standards Development for Materials Composition Declaration
WHEN : August 30-31, 2004
WHERE : Santa Clara, Calif.
WHO : Open participation from the global electronics industry
WHAT : To help support the development and adoption of standards around environmental compliance in high-tech supply chains, E2open (as a NEMI member) is participating in and supporting a workshop sponsored by the National Electronics Manufacturing Initiative (NEMI), the NEMI Materials Composition Data Exchange initiative, the IPC Product Data eXchange (PDX) standards committee and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) entitled "Material Declaration of Components and Electronic Assemblies: Data Exchange Solutions for Global Environmental Requirements." The 2-day workshop, August 30-31, will provide a forum for high tech electronics manufacturers to discuss the challenges and solutions for gathering and reporting materials composition information. This has become an urgent but often mis-understood topic as the deadlines loom to comply with environmental regulations banning particular substances and requiring material declarations at the bulk material, component, sub-assembly and finished product level. Companies engaging in outsourced manufacturing find compliance particularly difficult, because finished goods often include components built by multiple tiers of suppliers using product data stored in disparate applications and databases across each company. As a result of this legislation, which includes the European Union Restriction on Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and the Waste in Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), suppliers are frequently held accountable for materials contained in their products-including any components or subassemblies they may not have manufactured.
E2open Lends Key Support : As part of E2open's ongoing commitment to standards development and adoption in the areas of inter-company Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) and materials composition processes and data exchange, Richard Kubin, E2open's vice president of PLM Solutions, is participating in the workshop. In addition, Kubin has organized and is chairing a recently launched NEMI project on Materials Composition Data Exchange. This project works with the appropriate international standards bodies to help define and validate standards for the exchange of Material Composition data between all elements of the value chain and across the entire product lifecycle in order to support requirements of the WEEE and RoHS. This includes support for bulk material, component, sub- assembly and finished product level reporting; definition of standard data formats and transfer protocols; and contribution to international materials composition data exchange format standards and protocols to enable automated data exchange.
Driven by Industry : Demand for inter-company material composition tracking has increased among E2open's customers in response to The European Union Eco directives requiring OEMs to provide material declarations at the product level, which is challenging in today's typical outsourced, inter-company supply chain environments.
Broad Standards Compliance : The NEMI Materials Composition Data Exchange project will coordinate with and leverage existing activities, including those of related organizations, such as RosettaNet, International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), Electronics Industries Alliance (EIA), European Industry Association (EICTA) and the Japan Green Procurement Survey Standardization Initiative (JGPSSI).
The NEMI Materials Composition Data Exchange team in conjunction with the IPC PDX standards committee is sponsoring a two-day workshop that will provide a forum for engineering, business and IT practitioners to discuss the challenges and solutions for information exchange in support of global environmental initiatives that impact the electronics industry. The event will cover regulatory compliance requirements, status of existing and proposed solutions and the role of data exchange standards. The focus will be on the exchange and management of material composition data (MCD) across the extended value chain and the entire product lifecycle, with specific support for the European Union's RoHS and WEEE directives. Supply chain leaders and participants from across the electronics industry value chain, including component suppliers, distributors, manufacturers, EMS and OEM companies, will present their needs and hear those of their trading partners in meeting MCD compliance objectives and deadlines. An overview of evolving solutions, data exchange standards activities, related business processes, and IT process enablement of environmental regulatory compliance will be covered. Early adopters of prototype exchange solutions will be asked to provide insight as to the benefit and challenges experienced, as well as identify remaining issues, potential roadblocks and possible solutions. The free NEMI event is being hosted by Intel in Santa Clara, California ( http://www.nemi.org/calendar/product_exchng_forum.html ).
E2open's ( http://www.e2open.com/ ) solution for Multi-Company Process Management is specifically designed, built and operated to fully address the need to manage inter-company processes across multiple tiers of an extended supply chain. Over 2,500 companies currently use E2open's solution worldwide, with a concentration of firms involved in the manufacture and consumption of a variety of electronic and consumer products. A privately held company, E2open's largest customers include Hitachi, IBM, LG Electronics, Matsushita Electric Industrial, (Panasonic), Seagate Technology, Solectron, and Wistron.
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