The European Union has adopted Directive 2002/95/EC on the restriction of certain hazardous substances (RoHS) with their publication in the Official Journal of the European Union on February 13, 2003. RoHS requires the substitution of various heavy metals (lead, mercury, cadmium and hexavalent chromium) and brominated flame retardants (polybrominated biphenyls [PBB] or polybrominated diphenyl ethers [PBDE]) in new electrical and electronic equipment put on the market from July 1, 2006.
Digi International is committed to comply with the requirements of all applicable environmental legislation and regulations, including the restriction of hazardous substances in our products. The RoHS Directive specifies that an electronic product or component may not contain lead, except as specifically provided in the Directive. Digi will be in compliance with the European requirements for lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls (PBB) and polybrominated diphenyl ethers (PBDE) prior to the July 1, 2006 implementation date.
The European Union also adopted Directive 2002/96/EC on waste electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE) with their publication in the Official Journal of the European Union on February 13, 2003. WEEE is for the prevention, reuse, recycling and recovery to reduce the disposal of waste from electrical and electronic equipment. Requirements for WEEE go into effect on August 13, 2005.
RoHS Compliance Plan
To achieve our objectives, Digi is working with our supply chain partners to eliminate RoHS substances from our products. We are working with our partners to adopt industry standard solutions to eliminate lead and all other RoHS substances. The three primary areas of focus are:
- Standard Components: The supply chain for many standard components is becoming RoHS compliant as other manufacturers are working towards the same requirement.
- Custom Components: Suppliers of commodities such as cables, power supplies, plastic enclosures, metal enclosures and printed circuit boards have been surveyed since April 2004 and are either already compliant or are implementing their own compliance plans to ensure all custom components are RoHS compliant.
- EMS Providers: Electronics Manufacturing Services providers have been qualified to produce Pb-free soldered products with RoHS compliant materials since November 2003.
The process of achieving compliance is being completed in three phases:
- Phase 1: Completed a review in 2004 of the component and supplier base to determine supply chain readiness to produce RoHS compliant products.
- Phase 2: A majority of Digi’s most popular products have been converted to RoHS compliance and a number of them have been shipping compliant. Most products will begin shipping in volume in the second calendar quarter to be in compliance by the July 1, 2006, RoHS Directive date. Significant effort was put into research, product testing and supplier management to maintain the design integrity of historical platforms to avoid the need for re-qualification in customer applications. See the RoHS compliant product schedule for status.
- Phase 3: All new Digi product platforms are being designed to be compliant with the RoHS directive going forward.