Chemical Substance Management for EEE - Evaluation Method of Chemical Data Contained in Parts

The European Union´s Restriction of the use of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, which restricts the presence of certain chemical substances in electrical and electronic equipment (EEE), will take effect on 1 July 2006. To comply with the directive, assembly manufacturers are working on collecting parts data. However, some data given by parts suppliers are not correct. Therefore, it is necessary for the assembly manufacturers to confirm the accuracy of all parts data provided by suppliers. Some manufacturers carry out data checks using analytical instruments such as an X-ray analyzer. However, from the viewpoint of man-hours, it is almost impossible to check all the parts with an instrument, considering that one product may consist of hundreds or thousands of parts. To reduce the man-hours spent on data checks, we have developed a method to extract data that is likely to be incorrect and non-compliant. We assume a part have the similar chemical composition to its similar parts. Based on this, we compare a part data with its similar parts data, which belongs to the same parts classification. The results show that our method is able to extract incorrect data effectively, which will reduce the man-hour of the data checking.