norm bezane

White Papers

A white paper on technology for Underwriters Laboratories

ESCALATION OF TECHNOLOGY: STAYING EVEN WITH CHANGE

Since 1726, when Jonathan Swift became the first of dozens of fiction writers over the years to explore fantasy worlds of futuristic inventions, man has struggled to define relationships with new technologies. At UL, defining relationships with technology is not fiction but reality and an increasingly important challenge as innovations are introduced, discarded and quickly replaced by even more at an exponential rate.

When Theodore Merrill set up his first instruments more than a century ago, the degree of sophistication in his laboratory was not very much different than what could be found at the work benches of manufacturers creating products that would undergo tests. Working parts of most products were mechanical.

Through visual inspection, a capable engineer could see a lot. There were no embedded microchips with functions crucial but invisible to the naked eye. As we approach the next century, demands placed upon UL are far different. Industry wants to work with us on its own terms.

From a client standpoint, UL must be up to speed technologically. UL engineers must understand leading edge sophisticated technologies and have a strong knowledge base in order to quickly grasp leading edge innovations making their appearance for the first time. UL must harness technology for our own use to provide quick access to information and to allow us to bring increasingly speedy responses to customer demands. Projects or tasks that once took weeks to complete must now often be concluded in days, hours, and even--in terms of access to information--in minutes.

These changes can be seen in the form of a steep upward curve cannot keep close to the curve as it is applied to product after product and the use of sophisticated, quality oriented manufacturing systems, our failure to respond to the challenge will lead us down a lonely path. Industry will find other ways to gain necessary certifications and registrations and accelerate efforts to achieve self-certification at the expense of third party processors like UL.

With so much at stake, UL, the last five years, has pursued new technological initiatives with renewed vigor and expects to accelerate these many efforts in the near and far term. This white paper summarizes the background, explores the needs, and reviews present and future initiatives to fully prepare for the demands of the next century.

BACKGROUND

For many decades, the ability of UL to keep up technologically was simple and uncomplicated. Products were relatively simple. [IL wrote Standards and learned what it needed to know about the latest innovations from clients and advisors. The playing field was even. There was little difference between what UL engineers knew and what client product developers knew.

In the 1970s, as revolutionary technologies became available, UL found it increasingly difficult to keep pace. As a veteran engineer described it recently, UL by the late eighties had reached the point where it was about five steps behind. New initiatives underway since 1990 have allowed UL to close much of this gap. Today, this same observer notes, UL is a step behind the most technologically advanced innovative companies willing to risk huge sums for high gain with the possibility of technological failure in a way UL can never do.

UL never will be, nor should it try to be, this leading edge. We should march, however, with the majority of all progressive companies who employ technology in an advanced way. To find our rightful place along the escalating curve, UL has expanded capabilities, brought advanced technology to its business operations, set in motion a variety of human resources approaches and made significant strides in improving the speed with which it certifies and registers products.

CAPABILITIES

Industry once had a singular need: safety certification, a process that was straight forward and reliable. In a world of more sophisticated products, UL has been called upon to provide more. A number of initiatives demonstrate this new responsiveness. Just a few years ago, UL recognized the need to build new, first-rate capability to test products for electro-magnetic emissions in order to meet a standard required by the European Union as well as the FCC.

UL took steps to develop the world's largest anechoic chamber in Northbrook, and has completed or is in the process of completing additional facilities in Melville, Santa Clara and Camas. Once below the curve in EMC, UL is now state of the art with the best facilities and the best knowledge base. Software Certification Home heating systems, washers and dryers and increasing numbers of other products once functioned almost totally mechanically.

Today's appliances contain embedded software and microchips more powerful than the original room-size ENIAC computer of the late forties. The ability of these products to operate safely is now highly dependent on quality and effectiveness of the software. New hazards can result from software errors which would not occur with traditional products or technology. Thus, UL has written the first comprehensive standard for micro-processor-based product which is the basis for a new UL Programmable Software Certification Program now being made available to industry. Large-scale fire test facility.

Few additions to UL capabilities deserve the adjectives "state-of-the-art" more than UL's new large-scale fire testing facility. UL can now provide clients with the full range of both research and certification testing and can design test programs for every specific situation. The facility's 200,000-gallon water supply reservoir, sophisticated smoke abatement and water treatment systems, and use of innovations such as infrared cameras bring large-scale testing to a new level.

Fire modeling. UL is in the forefront in developing systems utilizing computers to simulate fire resistance testing to produce accurate, less costly results. Full-scale fire testing of products is expensive. UL's software utilizing measured data from actual tests can now be utilized to develop fire ratings on untested products through sophisticated manipulation of data. UL experts in this discipline are among the best in the nation.

NEW TECHNOLOGICAL RESOURCES

Major initiatives to improve UL's utilization of the latest technology are driven by obvious need and by two sets of people: customers who ask why UL doesn't have a sophisticated enough technical capability and UL engineers and technicians who want the same capabilities as their clients have. Major UL technical initiatives include: Computer network improvements.

Change from a mainframe to a Lan-based environment is allowing UL to significantly improve the ability of UL engineers in the laboratory and in the field to instantly tap into information once accessible only on paper and to prepare reports and send data on-line directly to decision makers for immediate action. Use of the network to do all that it can do is a work in progress.

Today, ISO auditors in the field dial into a server to secure up-to-date on-line information on assignments, schedules and data related to clients. Follow-up Service inspectors will soon have laptop computers capable of sending variation reports once prepared and hand-carried, directly to laboratories on-line to obtain quick acceptance decisions by engineers at work in Northbrook, Melville and other locations. Engineers who need historical test reports get them from an extensive file room via interoffice mail.

Soon, many engineers will be able to simultaneously access test reports on-line. UL's ISO 9000 registrars now access data for continuing use on several thousand UL-registered facilities. ISO registrations are expected to increase ten-fold in succeeding years; computers will play a vital role in helping UL registrars track registrations and utilize client data for their continuing work.

Nearly every UL activity produces a quantifiable result: a listing, a test report, Standards, that sometimes run many hundreds of words in length. Clients and authorities having jurisdiction access and utilize this data by consulting a four-foot wide bookshelf of UL-published directories and ordering thousands of copies of Standards and other literature each year. Although paper copies of directories and reports will probably always be available because they are frequently used in small jurisdictions that do not have computer capability, clients and larger jurisdictional authorities will increasingly be able to access this information on-line.

Plans call for listing information running to thousands of pages in more than a dozen UL directories to be rendered in Standard General Markup Language for possible access by many UL constituencies by year-end. Multiple options on how UL will make this data available--on-line, through general or client-specific CD ROMs--are now under active consideration.

SPEED

Perhaps no paradigm of the nineties is more crucial than the need for speed. Escalation of technological change means increasing numbers of manufacturers want products out the door fully certified for safety at a much more rapid pace. UL is responding to this technologically driven need by adding on-line capabilities reviewed above as well as through innovative approaches that help achieve speedy certification. In addition, UL has a new philosophy in place whose cornerstone rests on asking clients a question we traditionally never asked before: when do you need it? General managers at all facilities now track turnaround time as an additional way of helping to achieve faster and faster service.

HUMAN RESOURCES

In a sophisticated world of technology, no truism is more critical than acknowledgment that people are important, if not more important, than hardware. Knowledgeable UL engineers totally conversant with the latest technology must be able to interact with counterpart "techies" at client companies. UL's traditional approach has been to hire young college graduates and have them learn UL and business practice from the ground up. Engineers learn the latest technology on the job. In a world of escalating technology,

UL has refined recruiting procedures, training and other approaches. One principal concern is UL's ability to find and retain engineers who have an in-depth knowledge of technology as well as the sophisticated systems employed in business to achieve total quality. UL increasingly seeks college graduates who have dual expertise--expertise not just in electrical engineering, for example, but in electrical engineering and computer hardware/software.

A new alternate approach for UL is the hiring of new, more veteran personnel who already have acquired expertise through active and long involvement in business. This is particularly necessary as UL expands into new activities in the environmental health fields. UL hasn't done this yet. No area of activity, however, is more critical in keeping [IL up to speed technologically than training.

The need for more and special training is a constant refrain any time engineers discuss the issue of keeping pace technologically. UL this year rolls out a new concept: UL University (ULU). Although the initial focus of UL's first full-time training director is to offer class sessions on modern managerial skills, future programs will delve deeply into the realm of increasing knowledge of sophisticated technology.

Outside experts will be brought in to provide the most current, leading edge thinking. Highly technical training at UL has long been the province of individual departments. This will continue to some extent on an accelerated basis.

SUMMARY

As UL and its clients approach the next century, it is abundantly clear that one of the biggest challenges is to keep up with technology and to utilize the capabilities of technology in our own operations to improve our efficiency, reduce our costs and better serve our customers. Introducing new technology and continuing to support it requires resources.

UL is committed to utilizing technology not for technology's sake, but as a tool only when it can be used to an advantage and only when there is a demonstrable payoff. UL as an institution has probably done more to promote and protect the safety of products than any single organization in the United States. Now, and in the next century, we must harness technology and utilize the right people with the right skills in ways that will help insure that we continue as a major player in product saf

Special Report:
Building a Successful
e-Business