The RoHS regulation, adopted by the European Union, restricts the use of Lead (Pb) along with five other materials and chemicals from electronic products, and the electronics industry has until July 2006 to become compliant. While there are exemptions for the defense and perhaps aerospace markets, the greatest challenge to these sectors comes from their suppliers. Major electronic component manufacturers and sub-system producers are already using or in the process of integrating lead-free materials. Lead-free technology has proliferated across all electronics products and is effecting product manufacturing, reliability, rework and the sustainment of aerospace and defense programs. Thus, the question looms - How does the introduction of lead-free materials affect aerospace and DoD programs requiring high-performance and highly reliable electronic products?

Lead is a key ingredient of electronic solders and electronic component terminations. The elimination of this element is causing a significant shift in the way electronics have been manufactured, repaired and utilized over the past 50 years. This shift has caused major concerns in the program management and acquisition community, particularly the DoD and aerospace sectors. At the PM level there has been a great need for information, guidelines and criteria on how to address the effects of lead-free technology.

With a number of industry groups and technical bodies coming up with standards and handbooks to address the various technical issues arising from lead-free materials, processes and products, an Aerospace / DoD-wide approach to the transition was deemed to be highly valuable.

The Aerospace Industries Association (AIA), the Avionics Maintenance Conference (AMC), and Government Electronics and Information Technology Association (GEIA) formed a joint working group, LEAP (Lead-Free in Aerospace Project), with the express purpose of generating a series of international industry standards for the use and handling of lead-free solder and components in military and aerospace applications.

These documents are specifically targeted towards Performance Standards (GEIA-STD-0005-1), Technical Guidelines (GEIA-HB-0005-2), Risk Mitigation for Tin Whiskers (GEIA-STD-0005-2) and Program Management and Systems Engineering Guidelines (GEIA-HB-0005-1). The conceptual organization and scope of these documents is as illustrated in Figure 1-1.

The Program Management/Systems Engineering Management Guidelines for Managing the Transition to Lead-Free Electronics, GEIA-HB-0005-1, (The Handbook) is intended to educate program managers and system engineers in the Aerospace industries and in the Defense Acquisition Community on the issues and concerns associated with the transition from tin-lead to lead-free solder processes.

The Handbook Organization
The handbook is organized into sections, which include the discussion of major topics and programmatic issues associated with the introduction of lead-free technology in new and existing programs. This document provides a high-level framework for bringing together lead-free issues and allows one to take a stepwise approach to evaluating the impact of lead-free technology. The following major sections are included in this document:

General Discussion of Program Management Concerns
This includes a brief discussion of several concerns raised by the implementation of lead-free technology. The technical concerns are: reliability, configuration control, risk management, effects of tin whiskers, repair, rework and maintenance. The programmatic concerns are: cost, parts obsolescence, quality, contractual language and existing program constraints. A matrix of reliability concerns at the program level is described in Appendix A.

Requirements Definition
To assess the impact of the lead-free transition, the handbook recommends re-evaluation of program requirements with respect to customer requirements, WEEE/RoHS Directives, prime contractor requirements and elements required for contractual authorization.

Environmental Consideration
The handbook recommends that Program Managers evaluate the use environment, storage and transport conditions, and the definition of criticality to assess performance of lead-free solders in these conditions and to understand the possible differences in solder behavior.

Decision Criteria
The recommendation of several decision steps and criteria are provided as guidance to Program Managers. These include checklists to assess supplier's compliance to GEIA Performance Standard (Appendices C and D) along with obtaining and evaluating lead-free performance plans (LFSPP) from the supplier.

Re-qualification Test/Plan
A recommendation to evaluate the product to determine if the transitioning product should be re-qualified, delta qualified or accepted by similarity.

Rework/Repair and Maintenance
The document recommends obtaining rework/repair procedures from the supplier along with maintenance and training documentation.

Risk Management
The document recommends that the Program Managers identify, analyze and mitigate program level risk associated with transition to lead-free processes.

Cost
Recommends that the Program Manager should conduct a program cost impact analysis with respect to lead-free transition, including risk management, delta qualification impact, rework/repair/maintenance impact, warranties and schedule impact.

This handbook presents a good starting point for program managers and provides a framework to bring together all high-level program related aspects of lead-free. It highlights technical and programmatic areas for review and generates a discussion of program life-cycle phases among program team members. Checklists provided in the Appendices C and D are very useful and offer a detailed view of how current and future programs will be affected.

The handbook provides a schematic approach to assess the impact of lead-free technology with the topics described in an advisory fashion rather than as a rulebook. Tasks are presented from a high-level programmatic point of view and do not provide too many details at the practice level. Translation of high level tasks into practice level tasks can be better accomplished in a training format, which may be beyond the scope of this document. Lead-free technology is still in its infancy with regards to large-scale usage and the technical information required to implement many programmatic aspects is not yet complete. As a result, a specific action plan regarding risk matrix parameters is not yet available. Every program has a different scope and diverse needs, which need to be taken into account to further solidify actions at a practice level.

The EMPF is actively involved in assessing lead-free technology and its impact on DoD hardware, as well as taking an active role in designing and developing technical and program related courses and seminars to keep the DoD and industry personnel abreast of changes occurring in electronics manufacturing. In this transitional period, the Program Manager’s Handbook should be treated as a living document that will be updated as substantiated information and data become available.