China releases standards for monitoring, evaluating home appliance manufacturing process for product quality, safety

China’s State Administration for Market Regulation on April 15 released national recommended standards called “Quality safety of household electrical appliances—Guidelines for monitoring and evaluation in the manufacturing process”, which will come into effect on Nov. 1.

The standards provide guidelines for monitoring and evaluating the manufacturing process of home appliances in terms of its design, raw materials and components of products, and manufacturing operations. These standards set out what to consider and evaluate about quality of products and safety in the manufacturing process as well as how to do this; and specifically how to monitor and evaluate the manufacturing process of food-contact home appliances and customized home appliances for product quality and safety.

Scope

The standards apply to the monitoring and evaluation of the manufacturing process of home appliances, including but not limited to food-contact and customized appliances, for product quality and safety. The standards’ target is home appliance manufactures, but similar companies can also refer to them.

Rules for home appliance manufacturing

To ensure product quality and safety in the manufacturing process, the following principles should be followed in product design, raw material and component use, and manufacturing operations:

Design principles

• • In the design of home appliances, consider carefully risks related to the machinery’s dangerous factors, stability and durability as well as electric shocks, and design the appliances to eliminate these risks.
  • When choosing materials and designing processes for appliance manufacturing, consider the appropriateness of the manufacturing process.

Raw material and component principles

• • Ensure that the raw materials and components used in home appliance manufacturing are compliant with the limits on toxic and hazardous substances set out in the GB/T 26572 standards.
  • Ensure that tested raw materials and components comply with the durability requirements in the whole sets of the GB/T 14536 and GB/T 4706 standards.
  • Manage components that are untested or noncompliant with the GB/T 14536 or GB/T 4706 standards as “key control points” of the manufacturing process.

Manufacturing principles

• • Identify and assess the factors that can affect product quality and safety in the home appliance manufacturing process, develop management methods for them and reduce or eliminate the quality and safety risks.
  • Refer to Appendix A and B of the standards for the procedures of monitoring and evaluating the quality of food-contact home appliances and customized home appliances in their manufacturing process, respectively.

Evaluation of product quality and safety in the manufacturing process

Factors evaluated — The quality and safety factors evaluated in the manufacturing process includes, but is not limited to, the items listed in the table below.

Manufacturing processQuality and safety factors

Evaluation method — The evaluation is made by evaluating factors each weighted differently according to their importance.

The full text of the standards (in Chinese) is available at
http://openstd.samr.gov.cn/bzgk/gb/newGbInfo?hcno=9EE1BEE4844C81F7FA7E15FAC6010FE8