Oki Electric Introduces a Standardized Group Wide System for Collecting Information on Products Containing Chemical Substances
13/08/2003
Aug 13, 2003
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. (TSE: 6703) today announced that it plans to standardize a group wide system, named COSMOS, for providing information on chemical substances contained in its products, beginning the operation in November 2003. This standardization is to achieve the Oki group goal to abolish the six toxic substances stated in RoHS Directive*, the European Union's recent legislation on chemicals, from Oki products by the end of 2004. Oki will invest approximately 10 million yen to implement this standardized system and expects the cost benefit to exceed 50 million yen per year, along with a reduction in collection time.
COSMOS is a system that connects Oki's in-house component database systems and product design systems to determine the amount of a given substance a product contains. In order to eliminate specific substances, it is necessary to examine whether or not the substance is used in each component and replace it with components made without that substance. With COSMOS, users can easily discover which of the product's components contain a certain substance.
"In the past, only one of the four design systems was connected to COSMOS, which made it difficult for the other three systems to detect specific substances in product components," said Masayoshi Ino, Executive Vice President at Oki Electric, responsible for all the Oki group's environmental protection strategies. "By standardizing the system, the Oki group can share data on the substances contained in the components collected by different design systems during the green procurement examination. COSMOS also reduces the collection time from several days down to several hours."
By collecting information on the substances contained in each product, it will be possible to identify regulated substances as well as scarce substances such as gold, silver and palladium, thereby reducing the time and cost for recycling and dismantling the used products. Oki currently holds forty thousand data on chemical substances contained in components on its database system. In addition, Oki has started to expand information such as heat resistant temperature data to achieve lead-free solder and LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) basic data.
Through the database enhancement and standardization of design systems, Oki plans to enhance the COSMOS system further as a comprehensive tool to evaluate products' environment burden.
*RoHS (Restriction of the Use of certain Hazardous Substances in electrical and electric equipment) Directive: From July 2006, electrical and electronic equipment must not contain lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls or polybrominated diphenyl ethers in the 15 EU countries.
About Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
Founded more than a century ago in 1881, Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. is Japan's first telecommunications manufacturer, with its headquarters in Tokyo, Japan. With the corporate vision, "Oki, Network Solutions for a Global Society," Oki Electric provides top-quality products, technologies and solutions to its customers through its telecommunications systems, information systems and electronic devices segments. All three segments are integrated into one effective organization that functions as a collective force to create exciting new products and technologies, including information and telecom converged solutions. Through its business activities, Oki Electric satisfies a spectrum of customer needs in various markets. Visit Oki's global web site at http://www.oki.com/.
Reference: - The Global Environment Division under Corporate is in charge of this release.
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Naomi Takeuchi
Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd.
( Currently transferred to Oki Network Technologies (USA) )
PR Division
Phone #: +1-408-737-6479
Fax#: +1-408-737-6506
email; takeuchi764@oki.com
