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Why Is Product Compliance So Critical At HARMAN And How Does It Work?
By Dale Seidlitz
Manager, Global Quality
Product Compliance ensures products meet legal safety, regulatory and environmental standards. The objective of Product Compliance is to make sure that customers are safe from harm, that the products meet the various regulations set forth by the country or region they’re in, and in the case of environmental regulations, ensure that no chemicals are used that would harm our health or the environment.
Countries will not allow products to be imported into their country without proof of legal product compliance and proper markings on the packaging and product, and this compliance can only be obtained through reputable certified compliance testing agencies. HARMAN has an approved vendor list of compliance companies (examples: TÜV Rheinland, SGS, UL, DDTS) and we utilize these labs worldwide for their services and support.
Safety Regulatory standards cover the various electrical safety, EMC, FCC, CE requirements and testing is also done on other factors such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi; basically, covering the performance and operation of SKUs powered by AC or DC power sources.
Environmental Regulatory standards (examples REACH, RoHS, Prop 65 and TSCA) are specialized testing to ensure environmental compliance is met within the product, i.e. the materials used in the product comply. The product is destroyed in the process to achieve this certification as many of the materials are tested at a granular level. Sometimes to achieve the weight needed of a small connector or resistor the lab will require 200 or 300 of the components to reach the minimum weight to conduct the test.
The testing takes time to achieve due to the complexity and range of the testing standards. Electrical, EMC, Safety and Regulatory, and Environmental testing are done separately and typically take 8-12 weeks. These tests can be conducted simultaneously with multiple samples, and we plan for the needed samples at Gate 2 (business award to supplier) in our development cycle by determining what countries we will be selling a product into and the various tests that are needed.
Due to the time involved in testing, we routinely start this activity with units from our DV (Design Verification) builds and then finish up any further testing with units from our PV (Process Verification) builds. It is most important to certify EMEA and the Americas first, as many other countries require these reports as a baseline for further testing that a particular country requires. Some countries will only require a copy of the CB report from either the EMEA or the Americas for review and certification, while countries such as China, Korea and Singapore require, in addition to the EU & Americas reports, also need their own product samples for testing to their additional criteria.
CB reports do not expire and do not need to be updated unless the product is modified or updated. If there is no change to the product then there is no need to ever go back and update the CB report. Factory audits are conducted twice per year by the standards organization to make certain the product is still being built to the original specifications designed by our engineering team and approved by the standards company.
Once all testing is complete and successful, the lab will issue a Draft Report for review by HARMAN. After this report has been reviewed, approved and signed by me (or others on the Compliance Team), the testing agencies will then issue the final and official reports. Once we have the official reports for each country, shipping can legally start for that country. Compliance is always completed by Gate 4 (Start of Production authorization) of our process. Additionally, some countries require DoC’s (Documents of Compliance) which is a formal declaration verifying that a product meets specific regulatory standards. I supply these for each product once all compliance has been successfully completed.
It takes a team of compliance specialists to bring it all together successfully. Compliance is the standard we use to successfully ensure our products meet the laws, regulations and requirements of each country we sell our products into. Our experts in compliance monitor and oversee this process with our standards providers to ensure everything goes smoothy and quicky with each product through the NPI product launch, on time, on quality.