Dear Group The Institution of Electrical Engineers (IEE, London, UK) have recently published a new professional guidance document on "EMC and Functional Safety", a much neglected and misunderstood area which is becoming very important as more and more safety-related functions are controlled by electronics or software.
Their new Guide has a "Core", plus nine "Industry Annexes". You can download them all for free, in Word or PDF format, from http://www.iee.org.uk/PAB/EMC/core.htm. (Please note: this URL may be case-sensitive.) This new Guide makes the point that meeting EMC standards (e.g. under Europe's EMC directive) may well be inadequate for safety-related applications, and that these need a proper hazards and risk assessment using EMC and safety personnel who are competent to perform this task. (Engineers experienced only in safety or only in EMC will usually need more training if they are to deal with emc-related functional safety.) Everyone involved with EMC or safety should at least read the first few pages of the Core, and copy its Executive Summary widely to their colleagues and managers, so that even more people aren't put at risk by poor design or inadequate testing. If companies follow this new Guide it should help them show due diligence with European CE marking safety directives, and should also help them to achieve a 'state of the art' defence under European Product Liability and General Product Safety directives. (Many companies aren't aware of these latter two directives, because they don't require CE marking or declarations of conformity, but their possible penalties are very much higher than CE marking directives, and the defence they require is much more difficult to achieve.) Although this guide mentions European legislation on EMC and on Safety, it will be of relevance anywhere in the world where functional safety is an issue for electronic equipment or systems. Keith Armstrong Partner, Cherry Clough Consultants, www.cherryclough.com Cherry Clough House, Rochdale Road, Denshaw, OL3 5UE, Great Britain phone: +44 (0)1457 871 605, fax: +44 (0)1457 820 145 E-mail: keith.armstr...@cherryclough.com
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