Product Compliance - Strategies to Avoid Failing Testing

Have you ever submitted a product for safety or EMC testing, only to get the call or email that your product failed? 

In this article, we'll cover some helpful tools to avoid failing product compliance at the lab and gain confidence in what is often called "Pre-compliance testing" so that you can feel confident when submitted to the lab for testing.

Here are the main areas that will help avoid failures when submitting a product for compliance testing:

• Compliance Plan

• Markings / Manual Checklist

• Pre Compliance testing & Construction Review 

Compliance Plan:

This is a document that spells out the relevant standards that your product is in scope for, and this is based on the regions that your product is intended to sell in.  If you’re unsure of which countries the product may be sold into, it’s recommended to target North America (US & Canada), Europe & UK, Japan, Australia & New Zealand. Be sure to check with key stakeholders to ensure that product compliance is planned for all countries that the product is intended to be sold into.

Compliance plans can also serve as "test plans" for pre-compliance testing, including set up diagrams, requirements, test procedures, and reference documents / images. It is highly recommended to document the set up that is used for safety/emc testing so that the test can be repeated at a later date if necessary. 

Markings / Manual Checklists

Once you know what standards are applicable to your product, you can start to assemble a checklist for the required markings on the product & packaging, as well as required statements in the manual.  Many of these requirements come from other aspects of product compliance (i.e. WEEE mark).

By ensuring that your product has all the appropriate markings and statements in the manual, you can avoid any expensive last minute changes to product markings & silkscreen & printed documents.

Pre-compliance testing & Construction Review

It’s strongly recommended to perform the testing that the 3rd party lab will perform ahead of time to determine if there are any failures or design changes needed before submitting to the lab.  This will save time as well as cost. It's much cheaper to fail at the beginning of a project than near the end.

If you’re unable to perform the testing on your own, there are companies available to perform this type of pre-compliance testing for you.

I do also recommend that you perform a construction review with the laboratory that you’re planning to use for the product safety certification - especially if this is your teams first time evaluating a product to a specific safety standard.  A construction review is where the lab reviews how the product is made (as well as the markings & manual) to determine if there are any compliance issues (i.e. creepage & clearance issues, ventilation holes in enclosure, etc.) A construction review is recommended as soon as you have an electromechanical prototype that is somewhat representative of what the final product will look like - functionality is not required (it doesn't even technically need to turn on at this point).  Typically testing is not performed at a construction review.  While choosing a construction review does add additional cost, it offers the following benefits:

1. It can speed up the final approval of the product, as the lab already has some familiarity with the product when it comes time for the product. 

2. If there are any construction issues, this review will flag them early in the design process and give you and your team time to address them before submitting for the final certification.

3. It builds a relationship with the compliance engineer at the test lab who will be evaluating the product, which can allow you to have a dialogue with the engineer about their interpretation of the standard as your team is finalizing the design.

That's it! By following the suggestions above, you can help avoid last minute changes due to product compliance issues.