Supplier Education Programs…because your level of risk is directly tied to their level of accuracy
You are probably familiar with the “fear of God” story that drives so much of RoHS compliance: namely, Sony lost 110M Euros because the company exceeded Dutch cadmium standards in its 1.3M unit shipment. And you should be familiar with the REACH mantra, "No Data No Market". As a consequence, OEMs are collecting Yes/No or parts-per-million information from their suppliers, hopefully they are collecting full disclsoure data.But many suppliers do not really understand RoHS or REACH. Very few have ppm data. And, statistically, 50% of the tested Y/N responses from suppliers are dead wrong.
What to do?
Educate your suppliers. On RoHS and REACH. On your requirements. On your reporting format - IPC 1752 or - therwise - in conjunction with your data management and reporting database.GCG works with many small-to-medium sized suppliers: from wire-and-harness assemblers tomanufacturers of microwave equipment for large telecom systems.Recently, we implemented a customer’s Supplier Education Program for up to 1,000 suppliers.It focused on the IPC-1752 form as part of the customer’s data collection solution. It sped up RoHS and REACH data collection and serves as a cornerstone of the company’s due diligence defense. And, best of all, it is extraordinarily cost-effective and time-efficient.
Key Questions:
· Are you collecting Y/N or ppm information from your suppliers, and do you trust it?
· Are you running out of time?
· Would it serve you well if your suppliers knew more - and it didn’t cost you a dime?