In today's competitive marketplace, manufacturers cannot claim success through their products alone, rather they must go a step above and prove to regulators and customers that their organization is exercising due diligence to meet requirements of hazardous substances regulations. 

In early 2005, in response to the European Restrictions of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) and Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) Directives, industry leaders of the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC), the global organization that prepares and publishes international standards for all electrical, electronic and related technologies, gathered to create a process-based standard to which all companies could be held accountable for controlling hazardous substances. Known as a Hazardous Substance Process Management (HSPM)-based approach, the new standard integrates with a company's ISO management system.                                                       I            

In October 2005, QC 08000 (IEC Quality Assessment System for Electronic Components) IECQ HSPM, referred to as IECQ HSPM, was officially adopted as the international technical specification for an organization's processes to manage, minimize and/or eliminate hazardous substances. It is designed to complement ISO 9001:2000. 

QC 08000 IECQ HSPM defines the requirements for establishing processes to identify and control the introduction of hazardous substances (HS) into its products. In the event that hazardous substances are introduced into the products, this specification defines the requirements for implementing processes to test, analyze or otherwise ascertain the HS content, and to make it available to the customer. Documented processes shall be within the organization's business and quality management systems, which are added into the ISO 9001.

Benefits of Certification under QC 08000 IECQ HSPM
Aside from worldwide recognition, additional benefits are as follows:

• It provides credible third-party assurance to regulators and customers that an organization is exercising due diligence to meet hazardous substance regulations.
  
• It provides a comprehensive, common-sense approach to ensure production processes are managed.
  
• It demonstrates that a manufacturer has considered past and present compliance with customers' HS restrictions.
  
• Certification can help support RoHS, WEEE and Green Process management systems.

When an organization has ISO 9001:2000 or a comparable Quality Management System (QMS) in place, the certification process to QC 080000 is straightforward.

Due to the increasing request from several large manufacturing clients, TUV SUD America can now conduct audits to QC 08000.

For more information, contact us, or visit the WEEE and RoHS section of our website.