There are also standards that apply to whole systems rather than individual products.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Engineering Standards Overview: Conformity vs Compliance<\/h3>\n
Standards are published by the\u00a0Standardization Management Board (SMB)<\/a>, which includes the\u00a0International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC)<\/a>\u00a0and, in Europe, the European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization (CENELEC<\/a>). There are also national standards, such as ANSI standards, and industry standards, such as UL and NEC. For information on how IEC approaches the creation of standards, you can\u00a0visit here to learn more specifics<\/a>.<\/p>\n Below in Figure 1, you can see a high-level example of\u00a0how standards are created by the IEEE’s Standards Association<\/a>.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n The first thing to know\u00a0is that conformity to standards should be part of your design process. You do not typically ‘finish’ a design and then hand it over to safety and EMC specialists to deal with conformity. You will almost certainly have to redesign the product to make it safe and control its EM emissions and immunity, with a substantial loss of time and money. Instead, you should talk to these specialists throughout the design process. Then, when they evaluate the finished product, it will\u00a0meet all the requirements.<\/p>\n As a note, there are two special words, conformity\u00a0and compliance. The rule is that products conform to standards, and manufacturers comply with legal or market requirements.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n There are three situations that can\u00a0be considered:<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You are designing a type of product that is well-established in the market. In this case, your manager should tell you which standards apply. However, you might want to\u00a0be a bit careful; standards are may go out of date. You may be told that IEC 69999-9:2012 applies, but your manager hasn’t noticed that a much-changed new edition was published last week.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You are designing a new type of product. In this case, you may have to search for which standards apply\u00a0on the websites of the appropriate SMBs. Some of these are much easier to find\u00a0than others. In many cases, the details of the standard are hidden behind a pay wall and must be purchased from the standards body. It never hurts to reach out and ask for assistance in getting information on the standards; as long as your question is detailed enough to attract a useful response, that is.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n You are designing a product\u00a0using emergent technology (such as the proverbial Wednesday detector for a time machine). In this case, there might be doubt about which safety and EMC standards apply, and what performance the market requires.<\/p>\n In this case, your company should consider proposing new standards and participating in their development. This can be a safeguard (Figure 2)\u00a0against the activities of your competitor, i.e.,\u00a0Evil Intentions. Inc., which will try to exclude your new product from the market by setting standards you can only meet at a high cost.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n In days gone by, when it came to information on these standards, they were often hard copies in a locked filing cabinet in the CTO’s office, because they were not low-cost items. Clearly, they were not of much use there, and unfortunately, that bad practice isn’t totally extinct. But now, your company can get them on terms that allow everyone who needs them to have read-only access on their computer. They need careful study; the writers, who are engineering people just like you and me, do their best to make them as lucid as possible, but some concepts (such as measurement uncertainty) do get rather complicated.<\/p>\n Having chosen the applicable standard,\u00a0you should read it carefully several times. Don’t be afraid to ask questions about parts you are uncertain about. Everyone runs into that issue, and it’s far riskier to assume or guess about an uncertain meaning.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n It depends very much on what sort of standard it is. Safety standards are usually fairly explicit on what is required. Most simply say ‘do this,’ but a few, such as\u00a0IEC 62368-1<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0EN 62368-1<\/a>, are of a new type called hazard-based,\u00a0which encourages an analytic approach to determine requirements.<\/p>\n As a note, IEC and CENELEC\u00a0EN standards\u00a0with the same number may range from\u00a0almost identical to mostly the same but significantly different. CENELEC standards numbered 50xxx can be considered\u00a0‘homemade,’\u00a0while those numbered 55xxx (EMC standards) or 6xxxx are based on IEC standards.<\/p>\n It is a general principle of standardization that requirements can be set, in descending order of desirability:<\/p>\n The requirements for design or construction can often greatly hamper the adoption of novel approaches. On the other hand, requirements for performance are often minimum requirements for performance, so manufacturers offering better performance at higher prices often have to explain the advantages.<\/p>\n Additionally, EMC standards tend to be divided into four\u00a0kinds:<\/p>\n Note:\u00a0Tests attract a ‘PASS’ or ‘FAIL’ outcome; the outcome of a measurement is one or more (maybe many more) numbers.<\/p>\n For design, you need to know what tests and measurements are required and, in principle, how they are carried out. However, you don’t need as\u00a0much detailed knowledge as the specialists need, much of which is like lore\u2014acquired by experience.<\/p>\n Unlike safety standards, for which there are very few guidebooks\u00a0about how to implement them, there are\u00a0many books about designing for EMC conformity.\u00a0A\u00a0few are listed in this article’s bibliography. It is always advisable to check whether there is a later edition than the one listed.<\/p>\n Overall, product performance standards are where the designer doesn’t often have to refer to specialists, but can exercise their ingenuity to do more and, as a basic principle of engineering: do more for less money.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Bibliography:<\/p>\n To put standards into a general context, let’s say you are starting a new job as a design engineer, and someone mentions standards.\u00a0What do they mean? Well, it typically means, to name a few,\u00a0publications on: Product performance requirements Product safety Electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) Interfacing with other products (think Bluetooth and USB) There are also standards<\/p>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2055,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1963"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2056,"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1963\/revisions\/2056"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/he\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/ieee_how_standards_are_made.jpeg\")
<\/p>\nFigure 1.\u00a0A high-level diagram of how standards are created. Image used courtesy of\u00a0IEEE SA<\/a><\/em><\/h5>\n
Where Do Standards Come Into Play? Three Example Scenarios<\/h3>\n
Scenario 1<\/h4>\n
Scenario 2<\/h4>\n
Scenario 3<\/h4>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.hceics.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/benefits_of_standards.jpg\")
<\/p>\nFigure 2.\u00a0Examples of how standards can be beneficial. Screenshot used courtesy of the\u00a0IEC<\/a><\/em><\/h5>\n
Where to Find Engineering Standards<\/h3>\n
What Does Applying an Engineering Standard Mean?<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
\n\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n