EHS / Management Systems

EHS / Management systems

Environmental Protection as well as Occupational Health and Safety are integral components of our corporate culture. As such, we expect our suppliers to make every effort to protect the environment as well as taking responsibility for the health and wellbeing of their employees. Within a company, these principles should be implemented within the framework of a strategic approach. Such approaches can vary among size and significance of a company. Accordingly, we have categorized these requirements.

European legislation like REACH and RoHS require manufacturers and suppliers to provide information about restricted substances that needs to be passed on through the supply chain. As such, ��˿�� and its affiliated companies requires suppliers to declare whether products delivered to ��˿�� contain any substances that are restricted by such legislation. For doing so, suppliers need to complete the ��˿�� Substance Declaration to begin with, which is based on the List of Declarable Substances. In cases where suppliers have products that contain restricted substances as specified through the ��˿�� Substance Declaration, suppliers must declare such content to ��˿��. To provide the opportunity for our suppliers to increase their efficiency concerning substance declaration, ��˿�� prefers the centralized database, called BOMcheck, where suppliers can insert their substance declaration.

Reach

REACH - Regulation (EC) 1907/2006 is the European Chemicals Regulation concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and restriction of Chemicals.

It has been in force since 2007 and replaces 40 individual laws. Its scope of validity covers all substances as such and in chemical mixtures (formally called preparations) or in selected articles and applications. The is responsible for ensuring that the REACH Regulation is implemented and monitored. The aim of the Regulation is to protect human health and the environment. The REACH Regulation is considered to be one of the world's most stringent chemicals laws. The abbreviation "REACH" derives from the English title of the Regulation: Regulation concerning the Registration, Evaluation, Authorization and Restriction of CHemicals.

BOMCheck: ��˿�� preferred Supplier Substance Declaration Method

Our suppliers must complete the declaration on "Declarable Substances", which is based on the "List of declarable substances".

Together with other manufacturing companies, including Philips, GE, Agfa, Hitachi, Toshiba, IBM, Intel and Canon we have been supporting an industry-wide initiative of efficient substance declaration via a web database called BOMcheck. BOMcheck provides an easy-interface method to enter the requested data for substance declaration and can be accessed by all your participating customers. We would like to encourage you to join BOMcheck and use this database to provide us with the requested substance declaration for your products. More detailed information on BOMcheck, how it can help you to provide substance data to multiple customers and how you can register can be found at:

RoHS

Since July 2006, the "Restrictions of Hazardous Substances (RoHS)" European Directive 2002/95/EC has banned the use of lead, cadmium, mercury, hexavalent chromium as well as the flame retardants polybrominated biphenyls (PBBs) and polybrominated diphenylethers (PBDEs).

Besides the reduction of hazardous implication for humans and the environment, RoHS regulations shall improve recycling in such a way that in the long term recycling costs can be reduced.

��˿�� has implemented the European Union's RoHS directive. For example we are switching to lead-free soldering methods in our manudacturing operations and avoid RoHS substances in our products. In doing so, we expect from our suppliers to be also compliant to this directive.

Compliance with dangerous goods regulations is guaranteed by a worldwide network of properly trained employees throughout the complete transport chain - classification of our products, selection of transport mode, packing, shipping, use of service providers, etc. Our procurement and development departments are already focusing their attention on these regulations to assure our products can be transported worldwide in full compliance with the applicable legal requirements. As a global player, we also strive to serve our customers in this area in a safe manner without delay or objection.

Our suppliers are required to ship dangerous goods in compliance with the dangerous goods regulations applicable for the goods and the transport mode ordered, with simultaneous consideration of relevant national or operator variations. This may also include additional requirements for permitted inner packaging for planned successional transports as given in an order which also have to be taken into account.

During the initial process of quotation, suppliers are required to provide data on the dangerous goods to ensure that:

dangerous goods will be identified even when contained in equipment
especially for components and assemblies which will be integrated into a product, the possibility of transporting the planned product can be checked by us at the earliest stage of development.

The list of the dangerous goods data on which we need information is available in the Downloads. They may alternatively be given as part of a Material Safety Data Sheet containing all the necessary data if dangerous materials are concerned. For lithium cells or batteries - also packed with or contained in equipment – and for non-spillable, wet batteries – also contained for example in an uninterruptible power supply - the given forms (see Downloads) have to be used if the certification (specific for battery type and manufacturer) is not already available at ��˿��.

According to our experience, the following points have to be kept in mind:

Some goods classified as dangerous goods may be transported as a complete or partial exception to the dangerous goods regulations of a specific carrier. This must not result in the classification "no dangerous goods" being given! The correct classification according to the dangerous goods regulations has to be given to ensure that goods can be properly classified for all transport modes used.
Lithium batteries may only be assembled from tested lithium cells and have to be tested according to the applicable battery tests (38.3 UN Manual of Tests and Criteria).

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