May 2013

When a manufacturer is thinking of the European Union (EU) as the next market for its electronic equipment, EMC compliance is one of the must-haves on the list of approvals. Unless a company has dedicated quality personnel to ensure testing and certification is done to the letter, the approval process can be quite complicated for engineers – from identifying the correct standards and models for testing to writing the declaration of conformity and preparing the product for testing. This article will explain what engineers need to do to demonstrate compliance.

The lack of conversation around the environment, climate change, and our energy economy during the 2012 election season, while widely noted, still seemed to attract little attention. Certainly health, financial and national security issues were more immediate concern for many voters. Yet, the lack of initiative at the federal level has not kept technical innovators, astute business people and local governments from moving forward with new ideas for addressing our environmental and energy concerns.

Editor’s Note: Over the past months we’ve explored one engineer’s view of historical patterns and events that have set the landscape for today’s economic challenges. In this final installment, Mr. Kervill brings us into the present and concludes the series by summarizing his predictions for the future. Communication is so fast that it is not a factor in restricting today’s technology. Not only is the world flat, as described by Thomas Friedman, but it has only one time zone.