Electronics manufacturers should follow the distributors in order to comply with RoHS

According to Purchasing.com Newark InOne's President Tallentire says that in a number of countries in the EU, the amount of due diligence that a producer has undertaken to avoid putting a non-compliant product on the market will be their defense against any prosecution. In the United Kingdom, 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 Tallentire. "We have developed our own 10-step due diligence process to evaluate and validate the information we get from our more than 440 suppliers. Some of the steps include making sure all RoHS compliant parts are physically segregated from non-compliant parts at warehouses and that RoHS data from manufacturers is compared to product datasheets and other sources for accuracy.