As analysts predicted, more environmental laws are headed toward the electronics industry. At a November meeting in France, the European Parliament backed a bill entitled Registration, Evaluation and Authorization of Chemicals (REACH). The law is designed to make companies prove that substances in everyday products such as cars and computers are safe. The properties of roughly 30,000 chemicals produced or imported into European Union (EU) countries would require testing and authorization to be used.
The EU passed the legislation 407 to 155 with 41 abstentions. The rules still need to be agreed upon by EU members and the bill will come back to parliament before it becomes law. REACH will force companies to substitute safe chemicals for hazardous ones when alternatives are available. The bill does not specify whether the RoHS directive renders electronic products clean enough to pass REACH. Industry analysts have argued there are more chemicals in electronic products that will come under scrutiny.
Almost every automaker has had to 'pick a side' when it comes to alternative fuel options and ways to divest from a reliance on gasoline. Fiat is looking to back compressed natural gas or liquid propane as an interim solution.
Plastic may not be the most beloved of materials to the more environmentally minded, but Plasti 2012 aimed to mold a different opinion of the material in people's minds.
The rare earth element market has become steadily more rational, and new sources coming online will continue to reduce costs. Still, it is unlikely that prices will drop to their former lows.
Against a backdrop of mounting product complexity and a need to keep a lid on development costs, companies are recognizing a need to make simulation a more integral part of the design process. In response, vendors in the CAD world are building out CAE functionality as part of their CAD suites while simulation vendors are building tighter integrations to leading CAD tools. Keith Meintjes, Ph.D., Practice Manager, Simulation and Analysis at CIMdata, Inc., joins Design News CAD Editor Beth Stackpole in this radio program to explore the new face of integrated CAD and CAE, how companies are benefitting from this tighter partnership between platforms, and how integrating CAE earlier in the development cycle pays off in optimized product designs.
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