DCA Services

DCA helps manufacturers understand, comply with, and get ahead of environmental and social responsibility regulatory and customer requirements that impact their products in their markets. We offer a complete suite of business and technical services to clients that need to understand and comply with the European Union's product-targeted environmental regulations such as RoHS, WEEE, ErP, REACH, Batteries and Packaging as well as similar regulations and customer requirements around the world in China, Japan, India, Korea, the US, and elsewhere. We also help manufacturers understand and address source-of-materials regulations like Conflict Minerals (Dodd-Frank Section 1502).

Services include, but are not limited to:

  • Product Assessment: We provide answers to these questions: Are our products within the scope of the regulation? Are there exemptions we can take advantage of? What should we be doing now and in the future to maximize efficiency while ensuring compliance?
  • Gap Assessment: What are you doing today to comply? Whether the answer is "nothing yet", "we're well on our way", or "we've done it", DCA evaluates your current state and makes recommendations ranging from "check-the-box" to a complete, step-by-step plan to achieve compliance to targeted efficiency and profitability improvements.
  • Environmental Compliance Assurance System (ECAS): A gap assessment is normally the first step in developing an ECAS. We can help you define and implement such a system, include updating business processes, developing engineering specifications, identifying supporting tools, systems and services as needed, and training.
  • Regulatory and Customer Compliance: We understand the specifics of environmental and social regulations that impact manufactured products (articles) and can help you comply with
    • RoHS: RoHS comes in many varieties - European Union, China, Vietnam, India, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, etc. All have similarities, but no two (except for the EU and Switzerland, so far) are precisely the same. We can help you with business processes, documentation, labeling, data collection and management, supplier assessment, etc.
    • REACH: EU REACH impacts virtually all articles sold in the EU, defining substance restrictions and declarable substances (aka candidate list Substances of Very High Concern, or SVHCs), as well as the relatively rare notification and registration requirements for articles. We can help you understand how REACH impacts your products and supply chain, as well as where this extraordinarily complex regulation is heading.
    • Conflict Minerals: The once daunting task of collecting and evaluating smelters has become somewhat mundane, due to the efforts of the Responsible Minerals Initiative. As with other regulations, Section 1502 of the US Dodd Frank Act is not staying in the USA. We can help you understand and keep track of other markets' implementation of conflict minerals requirements as well as the potential for expansion into additional minerals.
    • California Proposition 65: After being in place for over 30 years, Prop 65 remains unique in the world of product-targeting chemical-related regulations. The regulation requires manufacturers to know whether their products contain any of nearly 1000 chemicals, and whether a user or customer may be exposed to them; if so, a label listing the chemical name is required. DCA can help you understand how the regulation applies to your company, your products and your supply chain, and how to work upstream and downstream to ensure compliance.
    • Circular Economy: Governments from the European Union to Ecuador are demanding that manufacturing industries move from a linear product lifecycle model, where used and end-of-life products are landfilled, to a circular product lifecycle model, where waste is obsolete. DCA can help you take a leadership role in working with governments, NGOs and others to help define how - on the grand scale - this will be done, as well as work within your own Product Lifecycle Process and business model to identify areas to "circularize".
    • Energy Efficiency: While primarily covering energy consumption during product use, we can help you understand and comply with energy efficiency requirements in any phase of the product lifecycle.
    • Customer Requirements: OEM customers, retailers and others downstream of you increasingly have requirements that include, and often extend beyond, regulatory requirements. We can help you interpret, understand and comply with these requirements.
  • Regulatory Monitoring: Monitoring markets for emerging environmental, human health and social requirements that specifically affect your products and product lifecycle processes takes time, effort, focus and deep knowledge. Let DCA do the work for you.
  • Standards: We've been involved with EPEAT (IEEE-1680.1, IEEE-1680.2, and IEEE-1680.3 as well as NSF-426/IEEE-1680.4, the emerging Server standard) since 2007, and co-chair the ANSI Chemicals Network. We are also on the IEC TC 111 US Technical Advisory Group (TAG). We understand standards and can help you understand how to follow, impact and comply with them.
  • Component Engineering: In the electronics industry, an effective component engineering organization can dramatically improve time-to-market and lower manufacturing costs. Need a CE checkup? Need to implement a Component Engineering department? We can help.

We offer many other services as well, including straightforward as-needed consulting on any topics in our areas of expertise. Have an issue you'd like to discuss? Get in touch and even if we can't help directly we have relationships with a wide range of colleagues and institutions around the world with world-class expertise that may be able to.