KANBrief 1/13
The world of work is undergoing continual change: work is increasingly being performed in globally networked teams, automation and collaboration between human beings and robots is increasing, safety expectations are rising, ergonomics is becoming more important, people are working longer before retiring. Testing and certification must rise to the demands of these social, technical and political developments if it is to continue to be effective.
At the EUROSHNET Conference in Helsinki in June 2012, Karl-Heinz Noetel and Henning Krüger, presidents of the horizontal committees of the European Coordination of Notified Bodies for PPE and machinery respectively, looked into the future and presented 10 propositions for the future of testing and certification:
Proposition 1: Testing and certification will grow in importance. The proportion of tested products will rise strongly, not least owing to the growing relevance of product liability. European legislation will increasingly adopt the American philosophy, requiring manufacturers to take greater measures to protect themselves against risks and liability claims. Manufacturers will require legal security, and for this reason will increasingly rely upon voluntary tests.
Proposition 2: An international, public database of products which have been tested and found to be substandard will be available – financed by mandatory contributions by manufacturers and governed by an international agreement, for example under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO). The database will constitute an important source of information for market surveillance and customs authorities and for users.
Proposition 3: Products will increasingly be tested virtually. Measured data will be exchanged over the Internet, imported and interpreted digitally by standard software. Tests will become cheaper and therefore more common. The initial development of the software required will however entail high costs.
Proposition 4: Knowledge of the specific application of the product will become more important. Test bodies will have realized the need to pay greater attention to the needs of users. Owing to their sector-specific knowledge, the test bodies of the organizations responsible for accident prevention in the individual countries will be commissioned with the work increasingly more often than test bodies which do not have this function.
Proposition 5: Besides traditional safety, other aspects of testing will grow in importance. Such aspects include ergonomics, energy efficiency, environmental responsibility, and system safety. Owing to a shortage of skilled personnel and more frequent career moves, machines will increasingly be operated by personnel who cannot call upon many years of experience and expertise and who are not adequately familiar with the machines. In order to assure safety and to avoid accidents, the certification of personnel will increase.
Proposition 6: Testers will become subject to new requirements. Machine testers will have to be highly proficient in IT and will be recruited from the new academic discipline of mech-IT-tronics. This development will be accompanied by an increase in the importance of software testing as a part of machine testing. PPE testers will be required to have extensive knowledge of materials and to pay greater attention to user specifications.
Proposition 7: Standards will become more international in nature, as will the pooling of experience between test and certification bodies. Enterprises will be interested in international standards, since they will be selling their products worldwide. Accordingly, the pooling of experience between test bodies will have to extend beyond Europe and become global in nature.
Proposition 8: Market surveillance authorities, notified bodies, standards bodies, manufacturers and users will become more closely networked. Networks will be used in order to make information available and for communication between these parties. The increased transparency will save resources. It is conceivable that the ICSMS information and communication system for pan-European market surveillance could be extended by the addition of an area to which all stakeholders are able to upload product-specific data.
Proposition 9: Beginning in Europe, accreditation will be harmonized internationally. Participation in the Coordination of the Notified Bodies will also become mandatory at international level.
Proposition 10: The number of notified bodies will decrease; the bodies will become much larger and will operate globally. Besides marks such as EuroTest, global test marks will arise, comparable with those in the area of consumer products.