Jim, This really brightened up my day, especially number 7. It's good to see a sense of humor in this, sometimes, very serious forum.
By the way, I totally agree with you - Directors and above cannot be trusted. I once worked for one who wanted to understand the product safety process so he could come up with a rating system, i.e., rate competitors product safety programs and advertise how great ours was. I took a similar tack, except for 5, 6, and 7, and he quietly moved on to pressure another department. Best regards, Dave Lorusso Lorusso Technologies, LLC "Your NEBS, Product Safety and EMC Solution" www.lorusso.com <http://www.lorusso.com/> 512.695.5871 -----Original Message----- From: owner-emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org [mailto:owner-emc-p...@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of James Collum Sent: Tuesday, July 30, 2002 9:54 AM To: emc-p...@ieee.org Subject: Re: Compliance Primer "Reason I ask is I had these questions posed to me by one of our directors. He wants to learn about compliance. I was caught flat footed. How do you explain what took you 19 years to learn? And that you really don't know as much as you think? I showed him my stack of standards but didn't think that would be a good place for him to start." I have been pondering this, and would like to suggest a different tack. In these times of recession he may be attempting to pick your brains prior to taking some draconian action, so in the same way that a good salesman always guards his rolodex, I would propose that you do the following. 1) Produce nothing in writing, I think that your showing him a huge stack of standards was an excellent place to deflect him. 2) When refering to EMC do so in front of a powered up product and make small circular hand motions when describing magnetic fields and larger hand movements for electric fields. Grasp the product firmly when refering to safety (make sure that your hair style is similar to that of a tv evangilist for optimum effect). 3) Have anecdotal evidence of the repercussions of short cuts (FCC fines for non- marked equipment at trade shows, foreign distributors being imprisoned etc etc). 4) Expand your D of C's for Europe to include every possible directive and standard that may apply (including the ones about straight bananas) get this particular director to sign the D of C's, as he is trying to fathom them, ask him if he has a passport and if he is thinking of a European vacation at any time soon, when he says "no" reply "excellent!" very quickly and excitedly. 5) Wear T shirts that reflect 19 plus years of experience (have them made to order and stone washed to age them if needed). T shirts such as "Shockley, Bardeen and Bratain, first transistor" may be a bit much but..... "Zilog Z80" or "Cromemco S100 bus systems" would be apt. 6) At the quarterly manufacturing audit, get the safety agency rep in a really foul mood and then whisk him in to see this director. 7) Seek out the most attractive and unobtainable female in your company and flirt and make passes at her in an outrageous and quirky style. (this last one has no bearing on compliance but if everyone in the regulatory field did this someone would be bound to get lucky and then it would make for an interesting story at an IEEE EMC society meeting). Usual caveats, my words not my employers, tongue in cheek, etc etc Jim
