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In the ever-changing global economy there is a growing number of product regulatory compliance requirement standards being imposed on manufacturers. Before marketing their products to domestic and international customers a manufacturer must deal with regulatory issues that apply to the development of their products. This results in the manufacturer having to have a regulatory compliance function within his company’s organizational structure that is staffed by competent well-trained personnel. This includes a Compliance Specialist who will need to stay abreast of the steadily changing regulatory compliance requirements, technology advances, and new areas of product regulations. The primary areas where product regulatory compliance requirements are applied are EMC, Product Safety, Environmental Protection, and Energy Conservation. All of these requirements have a direct impact on a product’s development program that includes its quality and reliability attributes.

A discussion topic between designers, namely those who only do circuit design and have no interest in the field of EMC, and compliance engineers attempting to meet regulatory compliance requirements, is the use of FR-4 as the core material for printed circuit board construction. Fiberglass Resin (FR) is low cost and has been used in almost every electrical product for decades, with exceptions such as military and satellite applications, harsh environmental conditions, and other unique uses. The disagreement lies with the extent that we can use FR-4 in high frequency applications and should we be concerned more with electrical performance or manufacturing and assembly.

This is the first in a series of articles that, instead of focusing on technical aspects of EMC design, engineering, testing, and standards which all of us enjoy reading, I am taking a different approach as a contributing editor to examine in a controversial manner who we are and where our career may possibly take us in the future.