It’s a sign of the times. The challenge of dealing with new environmental laws in Europe can be enough to make you reach for your: a) Legal-to-English dictionary, b) Out-Of-Office Assistant, c) aspirin bottle or d) all of the above. Is it time to buy stock in Bayer, or just time to think about new approaches to your work?

Engineers in the electronics industry — and you know who you are — have long toiled in relative obscurity, working on complex materials science issues and process technology advances most outsiders have known only as “lead-free,” if they noticed at all. These days, however, our industry is being swept up in a new and improved understanding of Europe’s Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) Directive, which governs the use of lead and other chemicals in electronic products in the EU. This has quite likely earned you more invitations to emergency meetings, more urgent phone calls from your Sales people and more lengthy questionnaires from your customers. Perhaps obscurity was underrated.

Consider instead the potential benefits of your newfound professional popularity. The RoHS directive is quite unlike other new regulations of recent memory in that it can call into question so many of our technical truths. This is your home turf: you are confident, you know the rules and you are ready to party.

But also consider that these watershed technical disruptions come with serious potential business disruptions. A successful strategy for managing all aspects of RoHS compliance will require a cross-functional approach led by internal networks of people who understand their roles. This can put an engineer close to the center of things, where the turf may be unfamiliar, but where the party really is.

The aim here is not to make light of a matter that’s seriously important to the electronics industry, but rather to encourage lead-free experts in various organizational roles to come together in a more sophisticated approach to the problem. Lead-free and RoHS compliance should no longer be considered the domain of a single department, whether Engineering, Materials, EH&S or any other. Environmental management, for that matter, should not be viewed simply as compliance, but as a comprehensive approach to supply chain management, incorporating internal controls and technical processes, as well as effective customer and community relations.

For example, even if you work in an industry segment that is exempt, such as the medical sector, your colleagues in Materials and Purchasing will help you understand that your supply base is already changing over to lead-free. These suppliers are reacting to the potential overhead burden of maintaining separate lead and lead-free product lines and your understanding of this dynamic could help direct your lead-free technology planning.

This approach is succeeding at Solectron, where our process engineers and component engineers have been working on lead-free manufacturing for more than 10 years. They are also among the founding members of a cross-functional team that has been preparing for RoHS compliance for more than three years. This has put them in contact with all of their colleagues, customers and suppliers in a more effective way, and they are contributing invaluable expertise at every step. They are showing our customers that we understand the challenges of RoHS compliance, and they are helping Solectron lead the way to effective solutions.

Engineers who have led the way on lead-free technologies now have the opportunity to lead their companies in putting together effective cross-functional solutions to the challenge of implementation. Find out who at your company needs to come together to be an effective force for competitive advantage in complying with the RoHS Directive. Look among the usual suspects from engineering, operations, purchasing and quality and consider augmenting the skills found there with insights from your finance, legal, marketing, sales and product development organizations.

Lead on.