Basics

Most manufacturers of electrical and electronic equipment have some sort of a regulatory compliance program. These may be part of the company’s internal procedures, a subscription to a compliance related database or various bits and pieces of information held by key people within the organization. No matter how complex or simple, it is imperative that management involved in global regulatory compliance issues have the right information needed to make their programs work efficiently.

Product liability has created problems for manufacturers and product sellers for many decades. These problems have been exacerbated by the expansion of product liability laws throughout the world. In addition, there has been a proliferation of safety regulatory requirements, starting in the United States and then moving to the European Union. In addition, countries such as Japan, China, Australia, Canada, Brazil and South Africa have all recently established or strengthened their product safety regulatory regimes and requirements.

The science of electromagnetic compatibility has been in exis­tence for several decades. As an art, it goes back much further, perhaps to the time of Edison when he was just beginning to experiment with practical electrical devices. I am sure that with some of his more sophisticated devices undesired interac­tions took place because of inadequate shielding or filtering. Certainly, with the advent of radio, incompatibility problems occurred as a result of the poor quality of transmitters and receivers. Perhaps the first formal recognition of electromag­netic compatibility problems occurred when the telephone and power companies found they had mutual coupling problems when their lines were carried on the same utility poles. Later on, the increasing use of the radio spectrum called for formal controls administered by departments in the post, telephone, and telegraph offices in many countries, or through the Feder­al Communications Commission in the United States.