EU review of RoHS Category 9 products goes to the heart of system integrity

Therefore, Category 9 companies, specifically the test and measurement industry, argue for special considerations because some of their devices are at the core of global system integrity. Not all test and measurement (T&M) gear is ultra-critical. Light meters and land surveying instruments don't need the high reliability of voltage meters or monitors of in-flight diagnostics for aircraft, for instance. But T&M tools are used widely in almost every manufacturing and verification process, in scientific and medical research, and even in the equipment RoHS police use to test products for compliance.

Thus, reliability of these precision tools is the highest priority, according to the Test and Measurement Coalition in Brussels, which represents about 60% of all industrial test and measurement equipment suppliers worldwide. Their answer is to allow Category 9 companies extra time until 2018 to convert.

ERA Technology Ltd., which was hired by the European Commission to conduct the technical study of Categories 8 and 9 for possible inclusion in RoHS, concluded they could be brought into scope. ERA recommends a 2012 enforcement date for most Category 9 equipment, followed by industrial T&M as late as 2018. (See related RoHS Category 8 article.)

The breathing room is also necessary for the task of redesign, the report said. T&M equipment is highly complex and produced in low volumes (from two to 10,000 units per year).

Stefanie Breyer, RoHS program manger for National Instruments Corp. (Austin Tex.) pointed out that the product life for National's products is typically ten years compared to one to two years for a cell phone. Long-life T&M equipment must be designed to perform without error for at least a decade. "We have a lot more reliability concerns than consumer product manufacturers," she said.

The extra time is crucial in order to collect adequate lead-free failure rate data from the field, giving manufacturers more confidence to make a decision.

"No one can say today if lead-free solder meets the mission profile of our products, which can have 20-year lifetime," said Robert March, material content program manager in the Product Regulatory Affairs Group at Agilent Technologies in the United Kingdom.

Up to 20% of tens of thousands of parts in a tool are custom designed. Additionally, one to two years of rigorous environmental and safety testing of new designs is standard practice. If, however, the compliance deadline is set earlier, T&M companies face hard choices.

Converting complex, long-life products in a short time frame would mean diverting specialized engineering expertise to redesign, and sacrificing innovation, sources said. The other choice is to pull products from the market and keep talent working on new developments.

"In the end, given the right deadline, [compliance] is perfectly doable," added Julius Waller, a partner in EPPA, a management consultancy in Brussels that advises the T&M Coalition.

What products fall under Category 9?

Category 9, however, faces an EU-erected obstacle that must be cleared before companies can proceed at full speed. The Commission has not clarified what they mean by "monitoring and control" instruments that make up Category 9, though references have been made to smoke detectors and lab instruments.

More confusion comes from EU member states and RoHS enforcement authorities who hold varying interpretations. In general, companies have had to guess if their products are considered category 9 and hence out of scope.

Radar, for example, "monitors and controls" so it may be considered a Category 9 product, or it could be excluded because it is used in military or aerospace industries. "Control" equipment is often integrated into large-scale fixed industrial tools, also not subject to RoHS.

"The lack of definition poses a real problem for some manufacturers," said Candido Garcia Molyneux, environmental lawyer at Covington & Burling LLP, in Brussels. ERA wants the Commission to use a long-standing definition from the safety directive EN 61010, which covers electrical equipment for measurement, control and laboratory use.

ERA's recommended Category 9 definition includes:

• Equipment whose primary function is monitoring, control, measurement or test
• And is placed on the market as a finished product
• And is not an integral part of a large-scale industrial tool
• And is not part of another type of equipment that is outside the scope of directive 2002/96/EC.

"Everyone is looking for clarity," said Chris Robertson, head of ERA's reliability & failure analysis. Robertson said ERA found 34 new exemptions are required if Categories 8 and 9 into scope. Some may not be necessary if the deadline is set at 2012, when enough lead-free failure data would be available.

ERA also suggested a blanket exemption for all sensors, detectors and electrodes because innovation in these areas could bring the highest potential benefit. If sensors, detectors and electrodes don't receive a blanket exemption, they would require more than 200 exemptions, largely due to lack of substitute material, Robertson added.

The ERA recommendations have been fed into the EU legislative machine. No one knows what the outcome will be. Anna Passera, spokeswoman for the European Commission, Directorate-General of the Environment in Brussels, said the next step occurs in the first half of 2007 when the Commission forms a draft proposal after stakeholder consultations. By the second half, the Commission is expected to have completed its own impact assessment.

In 2008, when Slovenia holds the EU presidency and wields some influence over the decision process, the Commission will present a proposal to the European Council and Parliament. "There will then be a time of co-decision processes that could be two to three years," she said.

In addition to a review of Categories 8 and 9, the entire RoHS directive is expected to be reviewed, Passera said. Given the experience of practical implementation of the directive, they may want to clarify some areas that are not so clear cut, so the review will touch other aspects of the directive, she said.

Editor's note: ERA Technology's 253-page final report on Categories 8 and 9 is now available at the EU web site: http://ec.europa.eu/environment/waste/pdf/era_study_final_report.pdf.