Recently, I had a discussion with an NTRL regarding product factory inspections. I was under the impression that where the label was applied, that was where the factory inspection would occur. And, if the contract noted a different company where the manfacturing was done and being that was typically (not always) where the lable was applied, that was inspections would happen.
Not so, according to these people. This was in response to a hypothetical situation I gave them to consider. For instance, say your company has sells a product in your companys name. But, you have assembly done at any number of contractors. And the NRTL label is applied at your company. Even if the contractors aren't on the contract with the NRTL for whatever reason, the factory inspector will inspect as much as possible the product at your site, then inspect the contractor site even though it is not on the contract. Basically at their discretion. The result of this is ... if say your company has ten contractors on a list of approved vendors with which do business (just as an example for the sake of argument) for possible assembly contracts and at any time you do business with just one of those contractors, this all really means you must inform the NRTL of all ten 'posible' manufactoring locations and all ten, including your own company, are to be inspected on a quarterly basis and thus increase your factory inspection cost by a factor of 10. For some reason, this all sounds a little unreasonable to me. What say you? Regards, Doug McKean This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to [email protected] Instructions: http://listserv.ieee.org/listserv/request/user-guide.html List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas [email protected] Mike Cantwell [email protected] For policy questions, send mail to: Richard Nute: [email protected] Jim Bacher: [email protected] All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieeecommunities.org/emc-pstc
