Chicago, October 17, 2006:
The European Union's Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) law, which took effect July 1, puts the legal responsibility for demonstrating compliance on the producers of finished electrical or electronic devices. Leading North American electronic components distributor Newark InOne, a subsidiary of global Premier Farnell plc, believes that component distributors must meet the same standards if they are to provide their customers with the assurance they need to meet the legal requirements.
In a number of countries in the European Union, notably the UK, the amount of due diligence that a producer has undertaken to avoid putting a non-compliant product on the market will be an element of their defense against any prosecution. In the UK, this due diligence defense requires that a manufacturer prove that it took all "reasonable steps" to meet compliance. "Reasonable steps" has been interpreted by the UK's RoHS enforcement arm, the National Weights and Measure Laboratory, as having a documented and auditable process that shows steps were taken to verify the information that is collected from a manufacturer's suppliers.
"We believe North American distributors should adhere to the same standard in order to support their customers", says Paul Tallentire, president, Newark InOne. "We have developed our own 10-step due diligence process to evaluate and validate the information we get from our 440+ suppliers. Our customers, design engineers and component buyers, can download a Newark InOne RoHS certificate of compliance at www.newarkinone.com for each of the parts we've identified as compliant, confident that we can back it up with a documented audit trail."
Newark InOne's 10-step due diligence process can be seen at the distributor's dedicated website, www.newarkinone.com/rohs. The website also provides critical information and services to help companies transition to compliance, including: a free RoHS data service for bills of material, on-demand lead-free soldering webinars, downloadable step-by-step guides to compliance and updates on US and Canadian green laws.