s a compliance engineering professional, you may encounter situations when you must consider how multiple and often conflicting requirements apply to your product and how to deal with them effectively.
For electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) tests, the product probably has requirements for conducted RF immunity (C-RFI), electrostatic discharge (ESD), electrical fast transient burst (EFT), emissions, radiated RF immunity (R-RFI), surge, etc. For environmental tests, the product probably has requirements for temperature testing for Cold, Dry Heat, Damp heat Cyclic, and Damp Heat Steady State, etc. Vibration testing may include tests for Shock, Bump, Seismic, and others. Write all the various requirements down by name. I like to place them in alphabetical order. You can organize yours how you wish.
The next step of the process is to determine what tool you will use to keep track of the requirements. The two easiest choices for me are a word processing program or a spreadsheet program. I elected to organize my conflicting requirements using a spreadsheet program with each tab or worksheet containing the comparison of conflicting requirements for one of the areas identified in step one (ESD, for example).
Figure 1 is an example of the tabs used in my standards comparison spreadsheet.
Notice that I arranged the tabs in alphabetical order. You may elect to order the tabs by type, such as all EMC-related requirements are placed first, followed by vibration, then environmental. However you want to do it is up to you. The important thing is to be able to locate the information in a hurry when you need it. It is almost impossible to remember it all.
I have seen others use a word processing program where they inserted a table for each item they wanted to compare. Your organization may use some other requirements tracking program.
The third step is to start filling in details for each requirement. You will need a copy of each of the readily available standards you are interested in comparing.
Figure 2 is an example of the conflicting requirements I put together for emissions. I have filled in as much information as possible without overly complicating it with too much detail.
The examples in Figures 2 and 3 will give you a good idea of what information should be used to compare conflicting requirements.