IMDS Recommendation 019 is being deactivated.

The IMDS Steering Committee has been examining emerging data quality issues and how IMDS data can be used to support the growing regulatory requirements of many different jurisdictions.  As a result the Committee has determined that Recommendation 019 will be deactivated.  The exact time frame has not been decided on.  However, it will be soon.  Maybe not as soon as the end of 2019 but probably by the end of 2020 or 2021.

Right now there is no information on what will replace Rec019.  It is likely that some form of full material declaration (FMD) will be required for each component in an electronic assembly.  The question is how to translate between the standard reporting formats used by the electronics industry and IMDS.

In the meantime, you should be collecting FMD’s for each component from all sources of supply.  This was already part of the Rec019 process as using the Rec019 semi-components in IMDS required the collection of FMDs and the comparison of those FMDs against the Rec019 semi-components to determine which components could be represented by the semi-components and which had to be represented as individual components.  Comparison of the FMDs agains the 019s also allowed you to determine if any components or their alternatives were non-compliant and had to be removed from the supply chain.

Rec019’s deactivation will change the process for entering data into IMDS, it should not change your data collection process since the data was already needed for proper use of the Rec019 semi-components.