Lead free projects for SMEs in the Nordic Countries - lessons learned

A ban on the use of lead in electronics will come into force from July 2006. Many Nordic businesses anticipated difficulties in facing the lead-free challenges, and a number of them in 2001 joined forces through the NoNE project to coordinate their efforts to adjust to the ban. In phase one of the project, extensive company participation by own lead free activities proved difficult to realise, except for product owners with own production. Two lessons learned from the first phase are: Lesson number one: “Nothing” will happen in terms of lead-free activities before legislation, market benefits, and customer requests force companies to act, and lesson number two: It is a necessary (but not sufficient) condition to involve contract manufacturers’ customers in a technology project. This is especially true for SMEs. In phase two of the project, product cases were introduced. Each case involved both product owners and their contract manufacturers, or product owner with own production. This proved very successful and resulted in a number of interesting results. From the second phase of the project, two important lessons were learned: Lesson number three: Also experienced and highly qualified electronics producers face a challenging task when making the transition to lead-free soldering, and lesson number four: Lead-free soldering is not just a simple switch of solder alloys!