Design Hazard Analysis
Design Hazard Analysis® (DHA) is critical for ensuring consumer products have a design for safety. By integrating safety into the design itself and the modeling phases of product development, companies can effectively minimize production setbacks, costly rework, and post-distribution problems, such as failures and recalls.
As everyone knows, changing a product's design on a piece of paper before the product is made is far less expensive than staging a product recall and changing the tooling and manufacturing process after a product's distribution. The earlier Intertek is involved in the new product development process, the more value we can bring to your company.
The core of the analysis is the concept of foreseeable use. Simply, in product design, consideration must be given to how a product might be used as well as to its intended use. Once foreseeable use has been identified, Intertek's research and technology resources are applied to predict the risks associated with product characteristics.
After the foreseeable use of the product has been identified, Intertek applies this knowledge to their extensive research resources to predict any possible risks associated with the projected foreseeable use. These resources include:
Injury / Fatality Data Analysis
Intertek measures the possible uses for a product against the historical injury/fatality data to determine the risk of injury. Intertek injury/fatality databases include over 4 million incidents with extensive information on the behavior of children and caregivers and product characteristics that cause injury or fatalities. Injury/fatality data analysis drives the science of safety and is an effective tool for injury prevention.
Intertek studies the size, shape and consistency of a product to determine the risk of injury the product characteristics may pose. We determine the likelihood that a child will be able to separate pieces of your product, and then use our test fixtures and gauges to evaluate the risk of swallowing and/or choking posed by each individual piece and the product as a whole. Intertek also determines what effect the consistency of the product would have on the severity of a choking incident.
Intertek's virtual and physical models accurately simulate the human anatomy. These safety criteria, specialized gauges, and digital simulations of the human airway effectively diagnose and demonstrate hazardous product characteristics by demonstrating exactly what will happen if a person comes into contact with a hazardous product. The models are anatomically correct representations of children and adults, developed from human anatomy studies, injury data analysis and human development research.
Request more information to see how Intertek can help your organization with Design Hazard Analysis.