Scott, I always preferred to keep it simple. Compliance is developing a product that complies with specific requirements stated in applicable national or international standards developed by recognized experts.
We comply with those standards because that is what our customer base expects of us, even though customers rarely mention that expectation. We also comply with the appropriate standards so our products will be acceptable to any third party who may test or evaluate our products. Ordinarily the scope of the standard will be all that is necessary to identify the correct standards. Most products will have requirements stated in more than one standard. For example: there will be a product standard, a transformer standard, a switch standard, a standard for polymeric materials, a standard for fuses, a standard for thermal cut-outs, a standard for radio interference suppression capacitors, standards for appliance couplers, standards for plugs, standard for the power supply cable, and others. Then there are the emc standards, the x-ray and laser standards, etc, etc. Regards Lou Aiken, LaMer LLC 27109 Palmetto Drive Orange Beach, AL 36561 USA Tel 251 981 6786 Fax 251 981 3054 Mobile 251 979 4648 ----- Original Message ----- From: Scott Douglas To: [email protected] Sent: Monday, July 29, 2002 9:15 AM Subject: Compliance Primer Hi, Does anyone know of any primers on regulatory compliance? Like what compliance is, why we do it, how does one figure out what standards apply to a product, and whatever? 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. Looking forward to your comments. Regards, Scott Douglas Senior Compliance Engineer Narad Networks 515 Groton Road Westford, MA 01886 office: 978 589-1869 cell: 978-239-0693 [email protected] www.naradnetworks.com
