What is Product Conformity?

2nd February 2008 by Simon Emeny

What is Product Conformity?
If we take the following two definitions:

Product – a deliverable (Goods, services, activity)

Conformity – Compliance (meeting accepted and known requirements or expectations of end user; regulator; provider)

Then we see that:

Product Conformity – The assurance that the totality of a firm’s output satisfies accepted standards. For many, product conformity involves conferring a brand mark to the approved activity.
As an example, EU Directives:

EU directives are a European legal framework. The member states of the European Union are established such that they have a European parliament and the European parliament sets a directive which is a direction that the community will take. The European directive is then taken in by each member state and made their national law, but each national law is based on the same directive and so is the same. We call them EU directives so that we don’t have to think about 25 different member states’ regulations, but they all implement the same legislation.

One type of directive are called product directives. If you were to go to a certain fast food chain and purchase a happy meal for your children on the label of the toy you would find that it had got a CE mark, CE standing for Conformity European. That CE mark means that the toy in the happy meal complies with the European directive. If you take the back off your mobile phone, you will see on the back of it or on your iPod, that they have got a CE mark. That CE mark means that they comply with a European directive and that European directive ostensibly ensures that the product meets a minimal level of safety that is acceptable across all of the EU member states.

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