Category: IEEE PSES

Any­thing to do with IEEE Prod­uct Safe­ty Engi­neer­ing Soci­ety activ­i­ties.

2008 IEEE PSES Symposium On Product Compliance Engineering

What a great Sym­po­sium! Dr. June Ander­sen kicked it off with a great keynote, and the rest of the ses­sions were excel­lent!

Last week I was at the 2008 PSES Sym­po­sium in Austin Texas.

This was one of the most suc­cess­ful Sym­posia held by the PSES, with 180 in atten­dance and 15 exhibitors in the hall. Atten­dees came from as far as Argenti­na, the UK and Israel!

Dr. June Ander­sen gave a great keynote address on Mon­day morn­ing, show­ing the group how IBM man­ages world­wide com­pli­ance in more than 180 dif­fer­ent mar­kets. Dr. Andersen’s back­ground is impres­sive, and a bit intim­i­dat­ing. I found her to be a warm, friend­ly and inter­est­ing per­son when we shared break­fast togeth­er before the con­fer­ece opened. Dr. Andersen’s pre­sen­ta­tion will be made avail­able through the PSES web site to mem­bers, so if you would like a copy and you’re not a mem­ber, now is a great time to join!

Kei­th Arm­strong of Cher­ry Clough Con­sul­tants, along with his col­leagues Jacques Dela­balle and Bill Radasky pre­sent­ed an inter­est­ing one-day work­shop on EMC and Func­tion­al Safe­ty, dis­cussing the effects of EMC on the safe­ty relat­ed parts of con­trol sys­tems. On Wednes­day, Kei­th com­plet­ed the series with a short pre­sen­ta­tion on the short­com­ings of con­ven­tion­al EMC test­ing in reveal­ing safe­ty-relat­ed design prob­lems. Def­i­nite­ly a worth­while series! Arm­stron, Dela­balle and Radasky are plan­ning a new work­shop for next-year’s Sym­po­sium in Toron­to that will car­ry on from this year, so if you are inter­est­ed in this area, plan to attend!

There were sev­er­al ses­sions on bat­ter­ies and the on-going work that the bat­tery com­pa­nies and the main bat­tery con­sumers are under­tak­ing to resolve the design and man­u­fac­tur­ing prob­lems that led to the note­book and cell phone fires in the past year. These ses­sions were packed and well reviewed by every­one I spoke with.

There were lots of oth­er pre­sen­ta­tions that I didn’t get a chance to attend — with 40 pre­sen­ta­tions and only one me, it was impos­si­ble to get to every one.

If you missed this year’s Sym­po­sium, start plannng for next year’s in Toron­to — it’s going to be great!