TABLE OF CONTENTS Implementing a strategy of EMC compliance within a company is much more than simply ensuring that the product designers make their designs meet the standards although this is a first step. EMC awareness, like quality and safety awareness needs to extend vertically and horizontally throughout the company if it is to be effective. This means that each department must know what its role is in maintaining a product s EMC and why. This applies with particular force to the purchasing, production and installation groups.
It also means that business and management decisions affecting EMC should be made in a similar climate of awareness. Investment decisions on EMC test facilities are a clear case in point, as also are marketing decisions on the specification and life cycle for a particular product range, and the question of whether to launch a marginally compliant or non-compliant product. Appointing an EMC specialist to take responsibility for these issues is better than no co-ordinated policy at all, but should only be the first step towards an integrated understanding throughout the company.
Most products are already subject to a range of environmental or safety specifications. These requirements are partly fixed by legislation and partly to ensure fitness for use of the product, and they include factors such as temperature and relative humidity ranges over which the equipment must operate, together with ergonomic aspects and control of hazards (such as heat or electric shock) associated with the...
