John, I find that Conformity magazine provides a lot of great articles on standards enforcement. In fact, I list some of the articles on our corporate Intranet web site to handle questions from both engineers and management. If you are interested in the publication, you can sign up for the free publication at their web site located at <http://conformity.com/> http://conformity.com/. I notice that there is an article this month on FCC "FCC Enforcement: Cell Phone Jammers". Since our company does not sell any intentional radiators, I don't plan to place this article on our web site. Regarding emissions, Dave Cuthbert of Micron Technology has the right idea that corporations should want to be a good world citizen that avoids excess polluting the electromagnetic environment. Similarly for immunity, a corporation should not only meet the bare minimum standards listed by Europe for the CE mark but also design to and verify to some margin beyond the European Union standards so the products are reliable for their customers in real-world customer environments. Too often the statisticians do demonstrated reliability testing in pristine clean computer room labs ignoring the real-world ESD and power line disturbances that are found in real customer environments. Yet there are always some people under the pressure of meeting a program schedule that need the threat of the law to ultimately do the right thing, so I do have this web page in my tool box. Fortunately, these objections have only come from newly hired managers, and I have never had to go to VP levels to handle a rogue manager's objections and temptations to cut corners. The EMC-PSTC distribution list prevents any attachments, so I sent my web page to you directly in a separate e-mail. However, to give the rest of the EMC-PSTC distribution a flavor of the types of agency enforcement that is occurring out their, I'll list three short excerpts of articles below. 1. October 2004: On October 2nd, a 20 year-old college student discovered that his year-old Toshiba Corporation flat-screen TV was emitting an international distress signal picked up by a satellite, leading a search and rescue operation to his apartment in Corvallis, Oregon, 70 miles south of Portland. The 121.5 MHz signal from the TV was routed by satellite to the Air Force Rescue Center at Langley Air Base in Virginia. As a result, the student was visited at his apartment by a contingent of local police, civil air patrol and search & rescue personnel and was told to keep his TV off to avoid paying a $10,000 fine for "willingly broadcasting a false distress signal." Toshiba also contacted him and offered to provide him with a replacement set for free. (Reuters on CNN.com) 2. September 2004: The Federal Communications Commission has amended its rules to increase the maximum fines (“monetary forfeiture penalties”) it can levy for violations of its rules. The article reports large fine increases for broadcasters, cable operators, common carriers. However, more applicable to information technology manufacturers, the article reports that fines for others (including equipment manufacturers and marketers) also increased to $11,000 per violation or per day of a continuing violation, with a maximum per continuing violation of $97,500. (Conformity Magazine) 3. November 1997: On Wednesday 8th October the first prosecution under the EMC regulations in the UK took place. It was brought by Cardiff Trading Standards against a local computer manufacturer who assembled computers from CE marked modules. A computer purchased by Trading Standards had been tested and found to be significantly over the limit on conducted emissions. The company pleaded guilty to two charges: failure to comply with the protection requirements and incorrect use of the CE mark. It was fined £1000 on each charge and £1000 costs. The company had claimed that it had followed advice commonly understood that CE + CE = CE, but now accepts that this is not true in all cases. (Compliance Club) NOTE: Using today's exchange rate, £1000 (UK) = $ 1,777.30 (US). Hope this helps. Monrad L. Monsen Senior Compliance Project Manager Product Compliance Test 303.673.2438 phone 303.673.2431 fax <mailto:[email protected]> [email protected] StorageTek
From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Tyra, John Sent: Friday, July 29, 2005 7:20 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Request for info on CE Mark penalties Hello everyone, Does anyone have any good articles or website examples of the penalties for non- conformance for the CE Mark. I especially need examples for EMC violations to use to stress the seriousness and impact to business for some non regulatory people here who need some convincing. Thanks in advance for your help John Tyra Manager Product Safety Bose Corporation The Mountain, MS-450 Framingham, MA 01701-9168 Phone: 508-766-1502 Fax: 508-766-1145 ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [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://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [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://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
