A number of governments have established laws and requirements for suppliers to place only safe products on the market. In this way, they are trying to deal more broadly with dangers associated with consumer products, rather than developing standards or regulations for every single product.
However, many suppliers have limited experience and few available resources or practical reference documents to guide them through this process, which consists of the following:
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— identifying the hazards;
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— assessing the risks;
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— identifying and implementing risk reduction measures;
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— identifying and reducing risks in the production process;
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— implementing processes to trace and identify products;
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— communicating use and warning information to consumers;
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— monitoring the product in the marketplace;
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— identifying any safety risks and managing them.
This International Standard provides practical guidance for suppliers of all sizes to assist them in assessing and managing the safety of the consumer products they supply – from the design of the product, to the input of raw materials, to production, to distribution, to retail and to the final product end-user and disposal. This International Standard is intended to be particularly valuable to small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as to suppliers that do not design or produce products, but are still responsible for their safety in many jurisdictions.
The supply chain for consumer products is made up of a number of suppliers, often in different parts of the world, where products or product components are being designed, produced and sold in other countries. Therefore, it is important that the guidance provided is aligned with international best practice, easy to understand and applied consistently by suppliers. The overall objective of following internationally consistent guidance is to produce safer consumer products, and thereby:
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a) reduce the product safety risks to consumers;
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b) reduce the risks to suppliers of product recalls;
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c) provide consumers with the information they need in order to make informed choices with respect to the safe use and disposal of consumer products;
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d) assist governments by improving the safety of consumer products.
This International Standard does not cover issues such as worker safety, protection of the environment, or social and ethical issues, which are covered extensively by other standards. Instead, this International Standard focuses on consumer products and providing guidance on reducing the risk of harm to consumers and users. It has been developed in parallel with ISO 10393, which focuses on product recall.