George’s problem

George is the Operations Manager at Future Beam, Inc. (not their real name) that makes communications products. 30% of their revenues are generated in the EU. They use GPC Electronics to manufacture their products.

Up until recently, George thought that telecommunications products would be exempt from the new environmental laws being introduced in July 2006. However he recently found out that this is not the case. Now he has big problems.

Their product is now not going to be RoHS compliant and by July 2006 he won’t be able to ship to Europe. On top of that they could have excess and obsolete inventory.

He called an urgent meeting with his QA, engineering and procurement managers to try to work out a solution.
Steve, the engineering manager said, “I don’t have enough resources to go through the BoMs and find alternative parts that are RoHS compliant.

Finally Neville the QA manager said, “I’m afraid there’s more to this than just changing to lead-free components. We also need to consider all the compliance documentation that goes along with everything we ship.”

The materials manager, Julie, broke in and said, “I think GPC Electronics is up to speed with this whole thing. I’ll set up a meeting with them.”

Fast forward to later in the week. The management team did meet with GPC Electronics who helped them to put together an RoHS implementation plan.

GPC Electronics created a business process to manage a “hybrid” build of product to reduce inventory exposure. They worked with Future Beam to scrub the BoMs and transition to lead-free components.

GPC Electronics also managed the myriad of details that were needed to changeover the products to be RoHS compliant, and successfully started shipping product well before the 1 July deadline.