Annex II of the EMC Directive states, "The manufacturer must take all measures necessary to ensure that the products are manufactured in accordance with the technical documentation referred to in point 3 and with the provisions of this Directive that apply to them." Now, what has to be done to insure this requirement is met will differ between different companies depending on the product, the quantity that is produced and how much control there is over its overall construction or makeup. Some companies do a lot, some do very little.
No matter what steps are taken by a company, a non-compliant product making it to market hurts us all. The failure of just a few companies will result in bureaucrats piling on more overburdening requirements on everyone. So do as much as you can within reason. As already mentioned, the key is having a good technical person familiar with EMC (and other regulatory disciplines) review all possible changes to a product. For our company, that responsibility falls to me. I review every change notice and print our documentation department processes. So if any constructional or component change is made I can review it and decide whether the change can possibly affect the EMC or product safety performance. If so, the change is tested by our in-house EMC/Safety lab prior to making it into production. To be able to make such decisions is only possible because of years of experience, being familiar with the products and their regulatory history, knowing the manufacturing abilities, strengths and weaknesses, and having a good relationship with the engineering departments. We also have an production audit testing schedule (PATS), where a production built sample is audited from each family of product on an annual bases. This verifies that unknown changes has not occurred in manufacturing that could affect compliance. Many companies do not even do production audits while others may audit more often than annually. It all depends on many factors which your technical person must be able to determine. Hope this was helpful. The Other Brian From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Luke Turnbull Sent: Thursday, July 11, 2013 5:35 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Production Assurance Tests for EMC Dear Group, I have familiarity with how the aerospace and automotive industries deal with testing and manufacture of systems, but am less familiar with products tested to commercial standards. What is the custom and practice for demonstrating continued compliance to EMC requirements for products that are in production for a long time? I assume that over time, the construction of e.g. capacitors may change - leading to different stray characteristics, even for the same manufacturer and component value; and that IC's may be functionally similar, but again have a different internal construction. Do system suppliers generally re-test for EMC when components become obsolescent? Do system suppliers generally re-test periodically in case components have been unknowingly changed, or in case production processes have been changed without considering their effect on EMC compliance? Thanks for your help. Dr Luke Turnbull EMC Technical Manager TRW Conekt Stratford Road Solihull West Midlands B90 4GW United Kingdom Tel: +44 (0)121.627.3966 email: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]> web: www.conekt.co.uk<http://www.conekt.co.uk> - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. 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If you received this by mistake, please destroy it and notify us of the error. Thank you. - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <[email protected]> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/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: Jim Bacher: <[email protected]> David Heald: <[email protected]>
