Around the world, and more often than not, government bodies require formal certification of products.  As product developers expand into new markets, they will be confronted with new standards, regulations, and customer expectations that may require new compliance processes.  A properly run compliance program improves your product's quality and safety, broadens your product's market, ensures compliance with regulations and laws, and helps provide protection from future product liability issues.

This two-day seminar presents a process development methodology that can be used repeatedly as new compliance requirements emerge. You will learn best practices in creating a compliance program for your products and markets, and how to use this program at all stages of product development and production. Sample spreadsheets will be used to demonstrate tailoring the program to your product, your markets, and your organization. A properly managed compliance program simplifies the certification or approval of your product, and ensures that you regularly apply and document good engineering practices for product safety and reliability.

• Summarize how a formal compliance program adds value to your goods and services
• Develop a compliance checklist
• Identify effective strategies for researching compliance requirements
• Describe how to manage the ongoing compliance process
• Explain the importance of documenting compliance and retaining records

Bill Walker is the owner and principal engineer at Walker Technical Services where he provides consulting services in design, testing, and certification for manufacturers and operators of aerospace and mobile equipment throughout North America, Europe, and Asia. Mr. Walker has almost four decades of experience in test engineering, regulatory compliance engineering, and product safety engineering. Mr. Walker previously held the position of Manager of Safety and Compliance at John Deere Forestry, Inc., where he oversaw safety engineering, regulatory compliance, product liability management, intellectual property management, and standards development activities for the world-wide manufacturer of advanced forestry equipment. Additionally, Mr. Walker held the positions of Manager of Testing at Diamond Aircraft Industries, Director of Engineering, Manager of Flight Testing, and Test Engineer at Eurocopter Canada, Ltd. He is currently a member of SAE MTC4 (forestry machinery), ISO TC23/SC15 (Forestry Machinery), TC23/SC3 (Safety and comfort of the operator), and TC23/SC14 (Operator Controls, Operations Symbols and other displays, and Operator Manuals). He has also served on Canadian Standards Association Technical Committees on Mobile Forestry Machines and Rollover Protective Structures. Mr. Walker received a B.Sc. Aerospace Engineering from Northrop University and M.A.Sc. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace Studies.