Hi all,
I do have a question, but the setup is sort of fun, so here goes:
Well, I'm at that point. A few years ago, when the EMC Directive was first
effective, we had a couple of products that we put through testing. We
started keeping "Compliance Folders" which consisted of a cover report
generated with MS Word combined with our in-house test reports and third
party test reports held together with a big rubber band.
This was fun for a couple of products. It was also fun when our company
could remember what we called ourselves and what our product names/models
were. Well, business is good...too good. The corporate captains have been
buying other companies, OEMing products from other people, OEMing products
to other people, changing the corporate name, changing the corporate logo,
changing product model numbers ... (buying 25,000 coffee stirrers with our
logo on them, we used about 20 before they changed the logo. Anybody what a
now obsolete GN Nettest coffee stirrer?)
Now I have about 20 large folders with anywhere from 100 to 600 pages each.
Every time we go through these excercises, I spend hours sniffing toner at
the copier (may explain some of my personality) putting different headers
and revision numbers on these documents. I then go through 1000's of sheets
of paper to run off copies for our representatives and then 100's of dollars
in shipping costs to get these 10 pound paper packages to the four corners
of the Earth. This is on top of the revisions that we normally incorporate
for product re-tests, re-designs ...
My question is, is there a better way?
I have considered buying Adobe Acrobat and then converting all of my Word
Documents to Adobe documents. Then I could scan in the attachments. All of
this digital information, I could then store on a CD ROM drive with a main
directory for my cover report and sub-directories for all of the various 3rd
party reports, CDRH filings ... We could then offer our Compliance
information via pdf files on the web.
Is anyone doing this? Do you have any recommendations for what software to
use? What scanners work best? What scanner resolution will duplicate test
reports without losing precious information?
Better yet. Does anybody know of a service where you can send 1000's of
pages of info to them for them to scan and convert to pdf files. This would
prove valuable during the initial conversion.
Has anybody tried this and been sorry they did?
I'm ready to go digital. My goal is to incorporate word processed reports,
third party test lab paper copies, third party test lab pictures, hand
written data ... into a coherent package for storage and revision.
I assume that many of you fight this same battle. Any hints or pitfall
warnings would be greatly appreciated.
Chris Maxwell
Design Engineer
NetTest
6 Rhoads Drive, Building 4
Utica,NY 13502
email: chris.maxw...@gnnettest.com
phone: 315-266-5128
fax: 315-797-8024
-------------------------------------------
This message is from the IEEE EMC Society Product Safety
Technical Committee emc-pstc discussion list.
To cancel your subscription, send mail to:
majord...@ieee.org
with the single line:
unsubscribe emc-pstc
For help, send mail to the list administrators:
Jim Bacher: jim_bac...@mail.monarch.com
Michael Garretson: pstc_ad...@garretson.org
For policy questions, send mail to:
Richard Nute: ri...@ieee.org
