Case Study: Ensuring compliance with UKCA - ICES-003
Project goal
Assure that the UKCA (UK Conformity Assessed) marking is applied to equipment to be placed on the market in Great Britain. Simultaneously, arrange that equipment to be placed on the Canadian market is conform the Information Technology Equipment (ITE) standard ICES-003, Issue 7.
Project scope
As a result of Brexit, the CE mark will not be sufficient anymore to prove the safety standards are met for products that will be imported into the United Kingdom. Therefore, the UK created a new UKCA marking, which, from January 1st, 2023, has to be attached to the part itself and/or the packaging.
On January 15th, 2020, issue 7 of the ICES-003 standard (Interference-Causing Equipment Standard) was released for all ITE components. During the following period of one year, ending on October 15th, 2021, both issue 6 and issue 7 are accepted. After this period, all products subject to this standard that continue to be manufactured, imported, distributed, leased, offered for sale, or sold in Canada shall comply with issue 7 of ICES-003. The main differences between issues 6 and 7 are the conducted and radiated emission limits of AC power terminals connected to external devices.
Engineering service
As at the introduction of the UKCA marking, the requirements were an exact copy of the requirements for the CE marking, the required effort specifically related to the ÙKCA marking was restricted to placing the new UKCA label in an efficient way among the already existing labels.
For each of the products to be put on the Canadian market, the most appropriate laboratory needed to be selected to perform the update in the EMC-report. Negotiations about the required work and related costs were hindered because, at the time the project was initiated, the laboratories had generally little or no hands-on experience with the update from issue 6 to issue 7. The EMC-report was updated, based on a paper-qualification of the related product.
For both the UKCA marking and the ICES-003 issue 7, the SDoC (Supplier’s Declaration of Conformity) was prepared, and the BoM was updated. Additionally, the schedule for the cut in of the new agency label was created, taking into account the current stock, MOQ, and lead time, with focus on cost minimalization.
For each of the products that the end customer had requested to perform the UKCA marking or the update for ICES-003 issue 6 to issue 7, the related process was finalized well within the given time frame.