Parvus Releases Statement on RoHS Compliance
Parvus to transition to lead-free production of embedded PC products by July 1, 2006; Parvus to focus on reliability assurance and risk mitigation techniques with high-reliability customers
SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH - NOVEMBER 3, 2005 - Parvus Corporation today announced it has released a compliance statement relating to the European Union's Reduction of Hazardous Substances (ROHS) legislation. The full RoHS statement and production roadmap are available online at http://parvus.com/uploads/Parvus_RoHS.pdf
The following are excerpts from this statement:
"While the EU RoHS policy applies officially to only the European Community (EC), the majority of non-EC companies are also transitioning to "lead-free", due in part to the effect on the global electronics supply chain. Consequently, many electronic components may be phased-out or redesigned since many components will only be available in a lead-free format. Parvus anticipates that it will soon become increasingly difficult to source and manufacture products that are in fact not lead-free, and that the industry's focus should be on reliability assurance of those lead-free products.
Currently, there is no formal standard or US government position on the issue, but intuitively, life-sustaining medical equipment and other mission/safety-critical devices require a higher degree of reliability assurance than commodity consumer products, since the consequences of malfunctioning electronics pose risks to human life.
To mitigate these potential risks, Parvus believes it is in our best interest to monitor, evaluate, and implement risk mitigation techniques that address any reliability concerns. To that end, Parvus encourages an open dialogue and collaboration with our high reliability customers to implement needful reliability-enhancing measures.
All standard products manufactured by our European parent organization (Eurotech) will be RoHS compliant by the prescribed deadline of July 1, 2006. As a result, all Eurotech products sold by Parvus in the USA will be RoHS compliant. Similarly, most standard products manufactured by Parvus will also become transitioned to RoHS compliance by that deadline. This transition to RoHS compliance is not an overnight event, but will be a process carefully rolled out over time and with careful validation and testing. Customers are encouraged to communicate with Parvus' Sales Department (sales@parvus.com, 801-483-1533) any product-specific RoHS compliance requests, so that customer priorities can be considered during the roll-out and design process for RoHS compliance.
Since some products may require complete redesign to become fully RoHS compliant, it is Parvus' and Eurotech's intent to make all revised products as form, fit and function compatible as possible with former versions. In some cases, products may be upgraded with improved functionality, while some older products will be discontinued. All new standard products, with few exceptions, will be RoHS compliant at time of release."
ABOUT PARVUS
Since 1983, Parvus Corporation has been a strategic systems engineering and development partner for aerospace, defense, transportation, and industrial OEMs. Specializing in the rapid design and production of turnkey embedded computing solutions for harsh environments, Parvus leverages extensive expertise in systems integration and a complete line of rugged PC/104, PC/104-Plus, and PCI-104 computer modules to ensure high reliability and accelerate time-to-market for its customers.
Parvus is the US arm of the Eurotech Group, which has operations across Europe, North America and Asia. Visit www.parvus.com or call 801.483.1533 for more information.
