A variety of activities have been initiated to lay down essential infrastructure to help local electrical and electronics manufacturers to produce products complying to new environmental friendly directives.

The enforcement of European Union's directive on the restriction of the use of certain hazardous substances (RoHS) in electrical and electronics equipment has raised a serious concern to all manufacturers in the supply chain around the world that they have to produce the products to comply with environmental friendly legislation especially if they want to sell their products internationally.

As one of the world's leading electrical and electronics equipment exporters, Thailand is now facing this new challenge. To make Thai products recognized and acceptable in the world market, improving the products to be free from hazardous substances is evitable.

Leveraging Thai manufacturers to produce electrical or electronic components to serve emerging environmental requirements, therefore, is a way to increase competitiveness to Thai industry. Yet, this process requires systematic changes in management strategy and production technology in all levels across the sector.

Realizing this, a group of private sector in the field came out with an idea to improve local manufacturers' abilities to cope up with the new directives. The sector has joined hand with the National Metal and Materials Technology Center (MTEC) to set up what it called “Thai RoHS Alliance”, a voluntary network where a group of manufacturers across the electrical and electronics supply chain, research institutes, testing labs, equipment providers, private and government organizations can create collaboration to develop knowledge and expertise and build up essential infrastructure to help increase competitiveness to Thai products.

Established in 2004 and hosted by MTEC, the alliance, which currently has around 500 to 600 company members, is a platform to allow the participants to exchange ideas, share experiences and find collaborations to further develop the products to serve environmental friendly requirements.

Thai RoHS Alliance's co-founder Dr. Nudjarin Ramungul from the National Metal and Materials Technology Center said that since the establishment, the alliance so far had come out with a variety of activities including the development of codes of conduct, guidelines and practical test methods.

Moreover, Dr. Nudjarin added the alliance also planned to develop a new database system to allow the members and other manufacturers to get access to essential information related to materials and restricted hazardous substances so that they could improve themselves to eventually become the so-called “green” supply chain in the future.

According to RoHS directive, substances including Lead, Mercury, Cadmium, Hexavalent Chromium, PBB and PDBE must either be removed or reduced to within maximum permitted concentrations from any products containing electrical or electronic components. To ensure that Thai products are free from certain hazardous substances before they come to export, screening test and accuracy test on hazardous substances are essential.

The alliance, Dr. Nudjarin said, also acted as a center to pull expertise within the network and assist local manufacturers to develop new testing methods while working with testing laboratories to test the products.

However, to guarantee the quality of environmental friendly products, it requires in-depth analysis to understand the impacts of the new eco-material whether the replacement bring or cause any changes to the product's performance and reliability.

In this case, Dr. Nudjarin said the alliance would work with research institutes to study on materials and develop new technology to support the production of high quality eco-materials and eco-products.

Meanwhile, the alliance will foresee the future trend and monitor the world's movement on environmental friendly concerns and then bring about suitable solutions to help local manufacturers prepare and adjust themselves to cope up with the upcoming changes in the market.

“All these activities are believed to accelerate the development of Thai products to comply not only with the RoHS directives, but also other emerging challenges and legislations which will occur in the future,” Dr. Nudjarin said.

As the world is now moving towards a new “green” era and the demand to use environmental friendly and energy saving products is growing dramatically, it's certain that those who can adjust and transform themselves to become more environment friendly manufacturers will get more chances to grasp huge business opportunities which are lying ahead.