CIMdata PLM Industry Summary Online Archive

24 January 2005

Product News

MatrixOne Design for Compliance Solution to Help Product Companies Comply With Emerging Environmental Regulations

MatrixOne announced the availability of MatrixOne® Materials Compliance CentralT-a business process application designed to enable companies to adhere to and keep pace with new environmental compliance regulations throughout the product development process.

Companies, particularly those in the automotive and electronics markets, are faced with an onslaught of new regulatory pressures, most notably those presented by Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and End-of-Life Vehicle (ELV) regulations. These regulations-which will be in effect starting with the WEEE directive in Europe in August of 2005 and RoHS starting in July 2006-are aimed at reducing the amount of hazardous materials in new products and ensuring that the materials are recyclable at the end of their product lifecycle. Under these new regulations, manufacturers must implement processes to collect, organize, analyze and report detailed materials and substance data related to all new products.

To simplify and improve these processes, MatrixOne Materials Compliance Central allows users to analyze Bill of Material (BOM), or product content information from any source and cross-reference the data against multiple substance lists and regulation requirements easily and accurately during product development. In this way, product teams can quickly determine whether a product's components meet compliance standards and certain design thresholds from the start of the project. Materials Compliance Central also allows for suppliers to be incorporated into the compliance process at its earliest stages to ensure up-front adherence to new regulations regarding their designs and components before it is too late or too costly to make changes.

"Companies are faced today with multiple reporting formats, different substance lists and threshold limits from their customers and various exceptions based on the usage model of these materials in the final products," said Sam Zawaideh, senior vice president of products and solutions for MatrixOne. "Reporting is just the tip of the iceberg. This is not just a design, manufacturing or supplier problem, it is an industry problem. The MatrixOne Materials Compliance Central application provides customers with a complete, out-of-the-box solution for reporting, analyzing, and iterating on the product data, along with aggregation of supplier data, and allows material and substance data and specifications to be incorporated in product development decisions throughout the product lifecycle."

MatrixOne Materials Compliance Central allows companies to reduce the number of design iterations by enabling engineers, sourcing professionals, and product managers to access and manage compliance data from the very beginning of each project. As such, users become familiar with the suppliers that offer compliant products, improving part selection and reuse. The solution can be implemented as a stand-alone application or with other MatrixOne applications, such as MatrixOne's Engineering CentralT for full collaborative product lifecycle support. For manufacturers in the auto industry, Materials Compliance Central offers full support and exchange capabilities with EDS/IMDS, the Compliance Connect protocol and other proprietary systems.

"While many of these emerging regulations are being enacted initially out of Europe, they will greatly affect companies worldwide who export products to European countries. The problem will grow even more complex due to similar regulations which are being considered in Japan and here in the United States such as California's SB20 rules," said Mike Segal, senior vice president of customer success for MatrixOne. "Knowing the contents of the materials being used to develop a product allows our customers to satisfy legal and regulatory requirements and potentially avoid liabilities. The MatrixOne Materials Compliance Central application will also help speed the product development process by reducing the number of design iterations due to the availability of compliance data from the very beginning of each project."

Availability

The MatrixOne Materials Compliance Central application is available immediately.

 

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