Competitive advantage and profitability are achieved by striking the right balance between speed to market, risk and return.  Introducing a new product to market and meeting quality, compliance and safety requirements can be daunting. The loss of an opportunity can have a devastating financial effect. Managing product compliance and safety better than your competitors offers a key marketing differentiator that will increase the value of your brand, it also reduces cost and cycle times leading to a significant and sustainable competitive advantage.

With the unrelenting pressure to reduce costs and source new innovative products, organisations are outsourcing manufacturing functions to organisations often based overseas.  In such circumstances managing product quality, safety and ongoing compliance to your specifications and regulatory standards can be challenging.  The effects of not having robust systems for managing product quality, compliance and safety in outsourcing arrangements can range from simple annoyance to catastrophe and ruined brands.

Many organisations cannot afford to have specialised staff on hand to review product quality, compliance and safety.  A better alternative is to partner with StanCert to manage this aspect of business.  StanCert can give you the tools and transfer the knowledge to help you efficiently manage and monitor product quality, safety and compliance enabling you to focus more of your energy on winning market share and driving profitability.

Our goal is to provide you with the most practical, effective and least expensive solution to your quality, safety and regulatory compliance needs.

StanCert can help you build and maintain an effective and efficient compliance and safety management system.  We will help you to build in compliance at every stage of your supply chain and business process, from concept design to the manufacturing, distribution and retail.  The key services StanCert offers are listed below.

Standards and regulations compliance health check
A regulation and compliance health check typically lasts about four weeks and is carried out in three simple steps. 

An organisation can commission a health check for their products, themselves or their suppliers or licensees. It is also possible to engage StanCert to carry out a subset of the steps listed below.

Health check teams recommend specific projects and actions - providing a targeted report that translates regulatory guidelines into a concrete organisational roadmap complete with cost implications.

1. The first step is a quick scan and prioritisation. The StanCert Team identifies the gaps between the client’s regulatory compliance effort and that of others in its peer group, and through workshops discuss and document the findings.  To make this work move quickly, StanCert brings its knowledge of regulatory compliance implications throughout an organisation. The outcome of Step 1 is a prioritised selection of gaps for detailed analysis in the next phase.
2. The second step is a focused compliance assessment, which uses proprietary tools to show an organisation’s quality, compliance and safety status against requirements in greater detail. This information supports decision making and project tracking.
3. The final step, planning, costs and implementation, produces a summary of the organisation’s compliance and safety status, prioritised projects with suggested actions and cost estimates, and  a list of quick wins. Clients can start acting on the recommendations immediately.

Outsource product safety and compliance assessment
Taking advantage of outsourcing enables organisations to reduce costs and focus their efforts on expanding markets rather than being focused on operational or production issues. 

StanCert are aware of the productivity gains from outsourcing and partners with you to offer its specialised skills to maintain product quality, safety and compliance throughout the supply chain. StanCert partners with you to help deliver products that will meet the necessary requirements to ship anywhere in the world, meeting schedules and avoiding costly mistakes. The key areas of expertise include:

• Risk analysis of your suppliers to help you to identify high risk activities that require immediate focus and can have the greatest risk minimisation impact.
• Supplier or licensee monitoring and assessment.
• Assistance with safety design guidance and evaluation.
• Developing test plans and procedures.
• Assistance with commissioning cost effective and authoritative product testing.
• Support with approvals, verification of compliance and certifications.

Development of technical documentation
StanCert assists you in the development of technical and professional documentation tools to offer your clients attractive and comprehensive support. Such documentation includes operating manuals, technical translations, illustrations, animations, product presentations and documentation for industrial operators StanCert is experienced in writing technical documents and technical manuals in a correct, concise and understandable way. Only then will information be conveyed in an efficient manner. This means accurate content combined with clear language use, optimally geared to your target group. This will result in satisfied customers and users.

Creation of product compliance folders
Many organisations often seek expensive and ongoing certification programs to verify and manage product compliance and safety. A viable alternative, especially when there is no formal certification system in place, is to compile a compliance folder. 

The compliance folder is simply a folder containing test reports and a self-declaration of conformity and product information. A compliance folder should be held for each product series and all compliance records must be in English.

• StanCert are experts in the preparation and management of such folders and can assist you with the following:
• Preparing a compliance folder.
• Reviewing compliance folders.
• On-site audit of compliance folders. The audit will identify missing or inadequate compliance documentation.
• Ongoing compliance folder management and support.
• Holding of compliance folders for importers and international manufacturers.

StanCert has a proven track record for helping organisations manage product compliance and safety as an enabler to access new markets, increase profitability and reduce cost. 

StanCert has led many high profile industry initiatives with Standards Australia and the Australian International Design Awards focused on improving product compliance and safety such as the Product Safety Framework and Product Compliance and Safety Management System. In leading these projects we have collaborated with The ACCC, CHOICE, Target, Coles, Funtastic, NATA, INPAA, Kidsafe, State Regulators and IGC - to name a few.

In most cases the Team from StanCert actually developed the Australian and international standards that underlie regulation related to product safety.

The Team has built institutions in many economies that have responsibility for managing product regulation, standards, compliance and certification of products.

At The Wiggles, we place a high degree of importance on achieving high standards and maintaining consumer confidence.  StanCert has helped us manage work related to product safety and compliance with respect to licensed product.  Their unique knowledge and expertise in this area has made them a valuable partner to work with, and has minimized our exposure to risk.  The delivery of their work is professional, on time, and on budget.

Pablo A. Muñoz 
Risk & Quality Assurance Manager 
The Wiggles 

StanCert provides high level strategic consulting services that provide a solid basis for companies establishing infrastructure that allows long term sustainable growth.  Project management skills are highly refined and problem solving is one of StanCert’s greatest attributes.  With a business environment that is increasingly requiring greater attention to compliance and risk management principles, the need to access companies such as StanCert has never been more important.  The company is well versed in applying a leading edge standards culture that is based around world’s best practice which give companies significant competitive advantage.’

Tim Wain
Executive Director
Infant and Nursery Products Association of Australia Inc.

MicroHeat Standards Compliance Requirement

MicroHeat™® platform technology relates to an innovative and highly efficient method of accurately, dynamically and cost effectively controlling the heating of flowing fluid. The immediate application is the heating of water for domestic and industrial use. The range of products currently being developed, which uses this technology, will be sold into international markets. The novel method of control used has never been previously applied in this instance, and as such the method of control had to be tested against existing electrical safety standards and regulations.

In our quest for an experienced, locally available consultancy to deliver an internationally acceptable, robust and credible analysis of our technology application in specific relation to electrical safety standards, MicroHeat contracted the services of StanCert.  StanCert were able to effectively analyse the control system from both an electrical and mechanical aspect, and were able to quickly and efficiently report on the application’s electrical safety standard appropriateness. The expedient way StanCert delivered accurate and reliable information facilitated the sign off of important production development milestones. This in turn allowed MicroHeat to meet the stringent development deadlines imposed. The importance of meeting these deadlines must be strongly emphasised, without which the development could not have progressed. The professional and competent service StanCert provided is acknowledged as being key to MicroHeat’s ability to deliver on its product development obligations.

Ced Israelsohn
Technical Director
MicroHeat Technologies Pty Ltd

I have worked with Mark Bezzina since 2006 to help develop the Products Safety Framework (PSF), a new horizontal system for developing standards. It was initially proposed by the Infants and Nursery Association of Australia, but required considerable development and validation before it could be readily applied. When this project first commenced Mark held a senior position at Standards Australia with the responsibility to oversee the PSF development and transform it into a useable guideline that they could published. Shortly after this project commenced Mark left Standards Australia to establish StanCert Pty Ltd, a consultancy company, to pursue this and other other business opportunities utilizing his skills in corporate governance, risk management and a number of other related areas. Mark was chair of the Infants and Nursery Product Safety Reference Group which was set up to oversee the final development and pilot testing phases of the PSF. This will culminate in May 2008 when the results of the pilot trialing and development of the PSF will be discussed at a forum hosted by Standards Australia. Mark’s contributions ensured this project came to fruition and within the very tight time frame. This was a challenging achievement, considering the many diverse groups involved and the complex nature of the user trials that had to be organized and analysed. Those involved in the development hope that the PSF will prove to be a valuable tool to help ensure safer children’s products are designed and manufactured for the Australian market. This in part will be a result of Marks enthusiasm and commitment, plus the excellent managerial and technical skills he brought to this project.

John Ashes
Manager, Research and Test Centre
CHOICE

With the growth of our company, representation of the world’s largest brands and our constant interaction with children and entertainment services, we needed to ensure that our systems and products were compliant with Australian laws and applicable Australian Standards. StanCert assisted us with our compliance programs from start to finish and we are very comfortable with our systems following StanCert’s thorough approach to system compliance.

Craig Caruana
Managing Director
Auset Pty Ltd

We invite you to contact us to discuss your requirements or to request further information about our services.  Please call us on +61 2 8721 6434 or email us at admin@stancert.com