In today’s increasingly litigious society, product safety testing is more important than ever. Stories of mobile phone chargers giving off electric shocks or washing machines going up in smoke can destroy hard-earned brand reputation and prompt a flurry of lawsuits.
Fortunately such incidents are rare, thanks to stringent approval regimes and certification. The quality of most electronic goods is documented with an independent, recognised certification mark covering the safety and performance of
the equipment.
But that process takes time and money. And, with the pace of technology change accelerating, companies need to ensure that safety testing does not hinder innovation.
Those concerns have changed the way that many test houses deliver their services to the electronics sector. With extended test times able to make or break new product development, it became clear that the old way of doing things was no longer acceptable.
“In the past, companies would submit their products to test laboratories and it was like submitting them into a black hole,” says Richard Poate, compliance manager at Tüv Süd Product Service, a leading product safety test house. “It went in, you kept your fingers crossed, hoped for the best, and if you were lucky, in a few weeks’ time you got a call back letting you know how things were going. That clearly couldn’t continue.”
More recently, organisations such as Tüv Süd have increasingly been taking a different approach to product safety testing. Instead of the product coming to them, they go to the site where it was made. The change has been made possible by the miniaturisation of test equipment, which means that work that used to have to be carried out in fixed laboratories can now be done at clients’ premises. The trend has had an enormous effect on lead times: what used to take four weeks at Tüv Süd might now take four days on-site.
“We have got technology to thank for the emergence of testing at manufacturers’ premises,” says Poate. “Much of the product safety test equipment that used to be used was big and bulky and not very portable. That’s changed. Recently I’ve been in the process of buying new test equipment – and what would have been four individual pieces of equipment that were all quite heavy and bulky now comprises one unit which is about an eighth the size and weight, and it’s rugged enough to be carried about. Effectively, all the main product safety testing kit we need will fit in the back of a small van.”
So why has that had such a noticeable impact on testing lead times? Well, a lot of it comes down to the sophistication of much of today’s electronic equipment. The truth is that, while test houses are experts at testing processes, they are by no means familiar with the workings of every type of product they are asked to assess. And, as equipment becomes more high-tech, so it requires more support infrastructure to operate it. By carrying out the test procedures at the customer’s site, any operational problems that arise can be quickly dealt with.
“To carry out safety testing, the equipment being looked at has to be operating correctly,” says Poate. “That’s very straightforward if you are testing a paper shredder – you poke sheets of paper in the top and not much can go wrong. But if it’s a GSM mobile base station for mobile phones then it becomes a lot more tricky to get it to operate. If we go to the manufacturer’s site, they can operate it for us. If there’s a problem, they can fix it.”
Testing accounts for only around half of the time that the approvals process takes. The rest of the time is spent checking documentation – trawling through dense service, instruction and user manuals. If the necessary documentation is not provided to the test house, it can seriously delay the test process.
“Most of the documentation that we would need is kept at hand at the manufacturer’s site. Swift access to it dramatically eliminates a lot of toing and froing on email, which can often take a long time. Something as basic as that is often one of the main factors in extended lead times,” he says.
Tüv Süd’s specific area of expertise is electrical product safety testing. That covers a gamut of devices, from domestic white goods to computer consoles, mobile phones, medical devices, audio and video systems. Its work primarily involves testing to ensure that the end user is not at risk from electric shocks and that there is not a heating problem with prolonged use.
Not only does it offer testing at manufacturers’ premises, it also provides witnessed and supervised manufacturers’ testing, and acceptance of client testing. Poate says: “This occurs mainly at larger manufacturers such as white goods producers who have their own test labs for flexibility and convenience. As long as these labs are in accordance with ISO 17025, then we can work with them to either witness or supervise their activities. They test under our guidance and we then review the report produced and sign it off and underwrite it.”
The trend towards testing at manufacturers’ premises has transformed Tüv Süd’s product safety testing business. Whereas 80% of its testing work used to be carried out within its own laboratories, with the remaining 20% taking place at clients’ sites, now the figures are the other way round. Poate says it has made the organisation more flexible and responsive to customer needs.
But it’s not a one-size-fits-all solution. Some testing, such as electro-magnetic compatibility, climatic, highly accelerated life, and vibration and shock, will always need to be conducted at specialised facilities. And here remote testing has emerged as another trend.
In many cases, these tests can last for months on end, and companies often baulk at the expense of sending one of their engineers to Tüv Süd for a prolonged period. Improved camera technology means they can now watch tests remotely. Poate says: “A lot of this testing is fairly uninteresting – when equipment is on the shaker, it only gets exciting when something goes wrong. So remote monitoring means the customer can access cameras through a web interface which they can control within predefined limits.
“Also, they can capture the data and rewind and see what happened at failure mode. That works well on longer test programmes and when the customer is located further away.”
A shipshape way of speeding up the process
Tüv Süd has recently been helping SRT Marine Technology to develop its radio communications products which fall within the scope of the EU Marine Equipment Directive (MED) (96/98/EC). The MED covers a wide range of equipment relating to safety of life at sea, from life jackets to pyrotechnics and radio beacons.
Under the regulation, manufacturers of such equipment can no longer self-declare that their products are compliant. They must now gain independent certification from an EU-notified body, such as Tüv Süd Product Service’s certification body BABT, before their products can display the mark of conformity (known as the ship’s wheel mark).
Previously, SRT had been experiencing long delays with its existing test and certification providers. Neil Peniket, chief operating officer, says: “When the MED was first introduced, there was only one organisation in the world that could deliver identification system test services to the marine industry. This created a huge bottleneck and meant that both us and our competitors experienced significant delays in getting products to market. For our business, this just wasn’t acceptable.”
SRT had developed a new identification range called Poseidon that is available as a complete OEM product or as a PCA module for integration into other manufacturers’ solutions. The system is fitted to vessels and uses GPS technology to ensure collision avoidance, to detect unauthorised vessel movements, and for the management of the vessels in port. Peniket says SRT needed to reduce the gap between developing and launching the product. “As the test houses we were using were proving to be a bottleneck, that just wasn’t going to happen with them. So we approached Tüv Süd,” he says.
The MED lays out the testing standards that should be applied to different items of marine equipment. The document lists the items and the corresponding modules that must be part of the equipment’s conformity assessment.
The usual route for wheel mark conformity for automatic identification system equipment is to follow modules B and D. Module B is the technical file stage, where Tüv Süd would test the product, from which SRT would compile a technical file to be given to the notified body before it could certify the product. Module D is a full factory audit, where quality systems and documentation are reviewed, as well as product sampling that the manufacturer has undertaken.
In this case, the manufacturer is obliged to pull random samples from the production line and run a set of agreed tests to ensure that the products remain compliant through the manufacturing process.
As SRT had already experienced delays, Tüv Süd had to find a faster route to market while still complying with the MED regulations. It therefore suggested that initially SRT could follow modules B and F, instead of B and D. Module F negates the need for a lengthy factory audit and allowed Tuv to do random product tests.
The process took four months, significantly faster than SRT’s previous experiences. During this time, Tüv Süd was able to test at SRT’s premises as well as at its own Fareham laboratories, which reduced the time that would have been needed to transport products between the two sites. It also reduced the time that the SRT R&D team would have spent travelling to Fareham and allowed them to stay at their office to tackle other work while observing the test process.
“They understood how imperative speed was to us and had the inspiration to find an alternative route to certification,” says Peniket. “They now also undertake the module D process of ongoing full factory audits for us.”