Thanx, John, for spelling out the broad level of compliance that we all deal
with day by day. Generally, compliance is an attempt to codify actions
which much of society agree is acceptable behavior. Splitting hairs as to
what actions are in or out is the work of lawyers on a daily basis.
My long standing example comes from a discussion on a long airplane ride
with a commercial driving instructor who worked with large companies who had
a fleet of autos and wanted to improve driving behavior and reduce their
financial exposure and insurance costs. He claimed that he was pretty
successful but had to decline a training contract in one South American
country where many drivers did not halt at stop signs or red lights and,
consequently, torpedoed cars going thru the intersection. This seemed
straightforward until his research showed that drivers did not halt for stop
signs because there were gangs standing by who would drag the stopped driver
out of their can and rob them plus hijacking the car to get it into a chop
shop to cut it up for parts. Apparently most folks thought the risk of not
stopping was lower than the risk of stopping; hence the low level of
compliance there. Summing up, human nature reins - people react in
accordance to their understanding of the consequences. Business is no
different, in my experience, and managers at every level need to provide
proper leadership to adequately show compliance with the needed norms of
society - including safety and EMC requirements.
Fortunately I have not run into many US cases where managers blatantly act
in opposition to codified requirements.
:>) br, Pete
Peter E Perkins, PE
Principal Product Safety Engineer
PO Box 23427
Tigard, ORe 97281-3427
503/452-1201 fone/fax
p.perk...@ieee.org
_ _ _ _ _
I agree w.r.t. to the definitions of the terms "compliance" & "conformity",
but Ed's post does throw me a bit because there are many areas where
non-compliance would just be totally stupid, e.g. such as driving on the
wrong side of the road or ignoring traffic light signals - that's not
restraint of trade (but you can get terminally bored on long straight roads
like US Interstates, so maybe that driving on the wrong side on those would
"liven things up" and make for "more competitive" traffic situations? J ).
The same goes for not producing compliant products, but there, I think, the
European product safety Directives may have the edge over US
legislation/NRTL standards approach because the former do not demand "strict
compliance" with Harmonised Standards if you can demonstrate that the
products do meet the Essential/Particular safety requirements of those
Directives, whereas as the US approach seems to positively encourage/require
strict compliance to the relevant stds. Maybe that's why they might be
considered stultifying and/or a restraint of trade?
John Allen
W.London, UK
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