Understanding Product Certification Relating to ISO/IEC 17065

This week's Elite Expert is Dan Crowder. With us since 1989, Dan is Elite's Certification Department Supervisor, FCC/CE Mark Team Leader, iNarte® Certified EMC Engineer, and one of our Sr. EMC Engineers. His areas of expertise include transmitter certification and testing for US and foreign markets, FCC testing and regulations, CE Marking, and international compliance regulations. As an internal auditor for Elite’s quality assurance team, he assists with the administration of Elite’s ISO 17025 quality system and ISO Guide 65 certification systems.  Finally, Dan is actively involved in transmitter standards development--including ANSI C63.10 and ANSI C63.26, the Telecommunication Certification Body Council, and the IEEE EMC Society. Read below to see what he has for us today.

 

The purpose of ISO/IEC 17065 is for conformity assessment or the certification of products, processes and/or services. More than any other type of conformity assessment activity, product/process/service certification is primarily focused on the establishment of confidence in the certified products, processes or services. The users of goods and services that carry formal certification marks are much less interested in the process of certification than in its results. 

Overview of certification:

ISO/IEC 17065 articulates the process of certification to contain the 5 steps pictured below. These five steps underpin all certification processes and therefore, the management system that supports them (in ISO/IEC 17065) is geared towards allowing the certification body to issue certificates that enhance trust in the safety and performance of the products examined.

Understanding Impartiality:

The concept of impartiality is the following: decisions made for certification are based solely on the defined merits or criteria related to the object of certification (product, service or process), or its operation, or some other aspect related to it. Only those things can be used in the certification decision – nothing else, and certainly nothing related to the decision maker. 

Conflict of interest is the notion that something other than those defined merits or criteria are influencing the decisions related to that thing. People or organizations are deemed to be in conflict of interest when they are associated with any condition or organization that might have an interest in influencing the outcome of the decisions. Rock solid demonstrations of impartiality require the CB to ensure that its own staff are not involved in any aspect of ownership, design, manufacture, or other relationship as regards the object of certification or its manufacturer / supplier. It requires that all sub-contracted organizations that participate in the evaluation processes also are visibly free of such conflicts. ISO/IEC 17065, cl 7.6.2 requires that all persons involved in the review and decision must be independent of the evaluation.

Do you have any questions about certification or other related topics? Share your comments or questions below and our expert, Dan Crowder, will get back to you.

Evaluating & Designing Around Specification Requirements

This week's Elite Expert is Craig Fanning. Elite's EMC Lab Manager since 1995 and one of our Sr. EMC Engineers, Craig has overseen scores of test projects over the past 27 years with the company. He is also an iNARTE Certified EMC Laboratory Engineer and author of several papers for the IEEE EMC Symposium.  Finally, as a member of SAE EMI and EMR Committees, as well as a US National Committee technical advisor for CISPR-D, our EMC Lab Manager undoubtedly likes to stay active in the EMC community. Read below to see what he has for us today.

Nothing is worse than going to the EMC lab and failing an emission test. This is especially true when you figure out that an operating frequency of the Device Under Test (DUT), that you designed, is causing excessive emissions within a frequency band which has a low limit. We see this time and time again in the test laboratory.

The best way to prevent this from happening is to evaluate the specification requirements before you start picking out clock frequencies and communication rates. If you look at the specification limits before you design, or during the design phase, you can determine frequencies that you should stay away from. Don’t select operating frequencies that fall into frequency bands with low emissions limits. Also look at the harmonic frequencies (especially the odd harmonics of the operating frequency) to see if a harmonic will fall into a frequency band with low limits. If possible, pick operating frequencies that fall into frequency bands with higher emissions limits.

Many times communications rates can be adjusted through firmware. This is something that can be in your “bag of tricks” when designing the product and/or troubleshooting a failure. When it comes to designing for good EMC performance…review and design to the specification. If you do, this will save a lot of future headaches and re-design costs.

Do you have any questions about CISPR Emissions Testing, Design, or other related topics? Share your comments or questions below and our expert, Craig Fanning, will get back to you. 

Craig is also guest-presenting a webinar, "EMC for Vehicles: Truly Mobile Electronics", with Washington Labs on Thursday, August 15, 2013.  Please follow the link if you would be interested in learning more.