Hazard-based safety design sharpens a manufacturer’s competitive edge

CSA Group offers a new standard for consumer a/v apparatuses and communication equipment.

Manufacturers can gain a strong competitive advantage by moving safety to an earlier stage in the product development life cycle. The new IEC 62368-1 global safety standard for consumer electronic (audio/video) apparatus, information and communication technology equipment recognizes this advantage, and enforces the hazard-based safety design approach at the product development stage.

The details

The IEC 62368-1 standard requires manufacturers to identify hazards, design the necessary safeguards, and then evaluate the effectiveness of those safeguards — even before they begin the process of testing their products.

This new global safety standard is a significant departure from the more rigid IEC 60950-1 and IEC 60065 standards it replaces. Its simplicity, flexibility and applicability across high-tech product industries offers many benefits to manufacturers. But to realize these benefits, manufacturers will need to get up-to-speed quickly, and begin evaluating their compliance before the standard takes effect on June 19, 2019.

The advantages

Shifting the focus from product liability to hazard-based safety engineering has many benefits. These include:

• • Better risk management and control, potentially resulting in simpler product designs;

• • Cost effectiveness, since safety is designed earlier in the product development stage; and

• • Flexibility, which enables engineers to tailor safety solutions based on the actual types and levels of hazards associated with their product.

CSA Group’s role

CSA Group can help companies reap these benefits. The global provider of testing, inspection and certification services has created simple step-by-step guides to help compliance managers and engineers meet the requirements of the IEC 62368-1 standard.

To learn more, contact CSA Group.

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