TORONTO, Aug. 20 -- Celestica Inc. is rolling out what it calls the EMS industry's first end-to-end environmental services offering, to aid OEMs converting to lead-free designs and processes ahead of European Union legislative mandates.

The EMS maker is offering what it calls its Green Services to OEMs seeking to comply with pending environmental initiatives, including the Restriction of Hazardous Substances legislation, which will require the removal of a number of hazardous substances, including lead, from electronics components by July 1, 2006.

Depending on they type products they design, OEMs will go through the transition in stages, Celestica general manager of engineering services Dan Henes observes. "There's a suite of [stages]  that each customer will have to go through. Some will go through [these stages] themselves, some will need help."

In a phone interview with Circuits Assembly, Henes said that Celestica can offer either "point" services - specific  solutions to specific problems, for example, help with certain design problems - or an end-to-end solution. "By breaking this into bite-sized pieces, customers can move at their own pace. They need to conduct an assessment of their designs and materials are in terms of compliance. We can do that BOM/risk analysis for them."

Among the services offered are consulting services, turnkey product conversion and technology qualification.

Henes noted that companies like Celestica, which directly handles designs from OEMs and buys materials from vendors, are best-positioned to help the supply chain navigate through the dizzying maze of lead-free alternatives and paperwork. "There's the synchronization of design, manufacturing processes and the component supply base. Some customers are struggling with, who's doing what in the supply base? We're probably in the best position to navigate that."

As evidence, Henes points to obscured effects of the lead-free conversion, which he believes EMS firms are attuned to. "You may have a product today that has 100 parts. Half meet lead-free legislation, and require no banned substitutes. The design and supplier [of those parts] say, 'We don't have to do anything for those.' But you need [lead-free] solder, which requires higher processing temperatures, and now you have to go back and qualify these new redesigned parts and put them side-by-side with the components that the OEM thought were OK. It's not because of lead conversion, but the temperature extremes that are a side effect of the conversion 

The transition, Henes says, is like a "massive industry engineering change." He asserts that for a Tier 1 EMS provider like Celestica, "this is what we do for a living."

According to Celestica, the company has been working on environmental compliance issues since 1999. Consortia work to date has included building lead-free boards to support the High Density Packaging Users Group's lead-free programs; sponsoring and directing the Centre for Microelectronics Assembly and Packaging's lead-free development activities for Canadian universities, and leading a NEMI program on the assembly and reworkability of lead-free solder joints.