This is a topic that can be of great benefit to a lot of people. I've had extensive experience communicating this topic to managers and execs throughout my career, and there is a logical approach that I've adopted which seems to work well.
First, there are three major components of any compliance system regardless of where you are in the world. They are: 1. Minimum Requirements (Standards) - what are the minimum technical requirements necessary to gain responsible market access in a given regiion? 2. Conformity Assessment - how do you prove that you meet the minimum requirements and whom do you need to prove it to? 3. Enforcement - what happens if you don't comply with (1) or (2) above? Naturally, each country or region has a different system for each component. For example, the standards may be voluntary or mandatory, industry driven or agency controlled, etc. For conformity assessment, third party involvement may be necessary or manufacturer self-declaration may suffice, or there is no requirement. The necessity for conformity assessment may be legal mandated or market driven. Production control may be involved and may be comprised of a host of different methodologies - post market surveillance, production inspections (ala UL FUS), quality system registration, or some hybrid of any of the above. Enforcement may be proactive or complaint driven. There may be legal ramifications for non-compliance, or simply liability concerns in the event of injury or damages. There is much more to this, and at the risk of indulging in too much self promotion, please e-mail privately if you're interested in hearing more about it. Greg Galluccio www.productapprovals.com ------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list. Visit our web site at: http://www.ewh.ieee.org/soc/emcs/pstc/ To cancel your subscription, send mail to: [email protected] with the single line: unsubscribe emc-pstc For help, send mail to the list administrators: Ron Pickard: [email protected] Dave Heald: [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://ieeepstc.mindcruiser.com/ Click on "browse" and then "emc-pstc mailing list"
