Long ago, when men were men, women were women, and dogs did not wear scarfs (sometime last year), had a customer that demanded the RAR for a component power converter, along with the complete CB test report. When this level of detail is required, have oft determined that the intent is to either to build a specification for another supplier, or to assist in the reverse engineer of the product.
The complete internal RAR should NOT be a public document, per both legal and technical rationale. Brian Senior Cynical Engineering Advisor to the First Order Join the Empire and crush the rebellion From: John Woodgate [mailto:j...@woodjohn.uk] Sent: 17 May 2018 21:49 To: EMC-PSTC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG Subject: Re: [PSES] Customer Requests for Risk Assessments Don't ask for the whole RA, just ask for clear statements about points than concern you. John Woodgate OOO-Own Opinions Only J M Woodgate and Associates www.woodjohn.uk Rayleigh, Essex UK On 2018-05-17 20:27, Nyffenegger, Dave wrote: This is a timely topic for me. Who are your "customers"? We partner with other various manufacturers, sometimes integrating other's machinery products in with ours or selling/servicing/refurbishing and providing heavy technical support for them as is. We sometimes ask for the manufacturers risk assessment (asked for one this week) so we can evaluate impact to our larger product or see the specific details that impact our servicing. We see the resistance from some Manufacturer's to provide risk assessments as well. -Dave From: "Kunde, Brian" <brian_ku...@lecotc.com> Reply-To: "Kunde, Brian" <brian_ku...@lecotc.com> Date: Thu, 17 May 2018 18:43:38 +0000 To: <EMC-PSTC@LISTSERV.IEEE.ORG> Conversation: Customer Requests for Risk Assessments Subject: [PSES] Customer Requests for Risk Assessments Our company makes Laboratory Equipment (test and measurement analyzers). Our company performs a Risk Assessment early in the development stage of all new products as so suggested by such documents. We generally use the EN ISO 12100. Creating this document highlights the possible sources of risks and allows our engineers to design products with an inherent design which minimizes the risks as much as possible. Our Risk Assessment becomes a document with a lot of detailed information including calculations, test results, detailed data, and other design specifications. Such information is considered highly confidential by our company. On occasion, and in increasing frequency, our company is asked by potential customers to provide them with a Risk Assessment Report for our products. Sometimes they threaten us such as they will not or cannot consider our products unless we provide such documentation. 1. Why are customers asking for a Risk Assessment? Where did that requirement become from? 2. Other than the potential loss of a sale, are we obligated to provide our customer with a Risk Assessment? I do not see such a requirement in the Directives or Standards we use. 3. Any of you been receiving similar requests? If so, do you provide a Risk Assessment? If so, are you not worried about providing such information? Couldn't this information be used against you in court? Is there a fear of providing useful information to your competitors? Part 2: I have requested a sample of the Risk Assessment our customers are expecting our company to provide. The examples documents are for the most part meaningless with little real detail about anything. But, if that is all they want to make them happy, we are considering generating such a document just to satisfy these requests. Any comments? When I ask our customers what information they are looking to gain from the Risk Assessment, they tell me they want to know the level of residual risks our products might have. I reply that all residual risks are well documented and warned about in the provided User Manual. However, this doesn't seem to satisfy them. They still want a Risk Assessment Report. So are other companies having to generate a stripped down Risk Assessment with no real detail to satisfy these customer requests? Or is it just us? Thanks for your input, comments, and suggestions. The Other Brian - ---------------------------------------------------------------- This message is from the IEEE Product Safety Engineering Society emc-pstc discussion list. To post a message to the list, send your e-mail to <emc-p...@ieee.org> All emc-pstc postings are archived and searchable on the web at: http://www.ieee-pses.org/emc-pstc.html Attachments are not permitted but the IEEE PSES Online Communities site at http://product-compliance.oc.ieee.org/ can be used for graphics (in well-used formats), large files, etc. Website: http://www.ieee-pses.org/ Instructions: http://www.ieee-pses.org/list.html (including how to unsubscribe) List rules: http://www.ieee-pses.org/listrules.html For help, send mail to the list administrators: Scott Douglas <sdoug...@ieee.org> Mike Cantwell <mcantw...@ieee.org> For policy questions, send mail to: Jim Bacher: <j.bac...@ieee.org> David Heald: <dhe...@gmail.com>
