iRobot accused of selling products that break safety and government regulations

[splin]

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2020/03/12/irobot_safety_regulation_wrongful_termination/

A former iRobot employee is suing the manufacturer for firing him after he highlighted alleged failures to comply with regulations.

Janusz Pankowski claims the robo-vac specialists unfairly dismissed him from his position as director for compliance back in May 2018 following a row over whether products were erroneously labeled as being in compliance with safety requirements, and other state, federal, and international rules.

I suspect this case is just the tip of the iceberg - not with respect to safety but for products which don't have up to date certfication - ie. products which have been updated either trivially, or rather more substantially, from the one that was originally tested and certified. Something as simple as using an direct equivalent component from a different manufacturer can be enough to change the behaviour of a product such that it no longer complies with emissions limits.

Case in point, Dave's microcurrent when an unrequested subsitute opamp converted it from an amplifier based product into an oscillatory, un-intentionally radiating product! In that case the 'change' was spotted and fixed because it affected the performance.

Firmware updates can also radically impact emissions, but I bet it's pretty uncommon for products to go through expensive emissions recertification testing every time the FW is revised. Mainly because almost no-one cares, manufacture or customer alike, in the the vast majority of cases, with the exeption perhaps of sensitive areas such as medical products.

I particularly recommend reading the comments in the linked article for some more insights. I liked this one:

Reply Icon
Re: Safety?

"I've worked for companies that get one device / one generation of device tested, then change components or release a new product and they don't retest. They are also out of compliance, but they still sell based on the old certificates they received for older models."

Ah, the Boeing Business Model.

[amyk]

I haven't heard anything in the news about their products causing fires or whatever else...

[splin]

I haven't heard anything in the news about their products causing fires or whatever else...

They probably didn't:

Janusz Pankowski claims the robo-vac specialists unfairly dismissed him from his position as director for compliance back in May 2018 following a row over whether products were erroneously labeled as being in compliance with safety requirements, and other state, federal, and international rules.

Not being in compliance with safety requirements doesn't necessarily mean they are dangerous - such requirements almost always have large safety margins for obvious reasons.

Judging by the many Youtube videos showing teardowns of cheap power supplies which fall badly short of safety standards, it's a miracle you don't hear of many, many cases of electrocutions or fire incidents. Probably there are many unreported incidents where no-one gets badly hurt.