BedTimes, Feature, January 2007
by Karl Kunkel
Bedding manufacturers have been watching their calendars closely. On July 1—less than six months from now—all beds made in the United States and all those imported into the country must meet the requirements of the new federal open-flame standard, mandated by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and known more formally as 16 CFR Part 1633.
“Some people are reticent about saying it is that deep of a project but, indeed, it is,” says Allen Podratsky, president of Global Supply Chain Partners, a consulting firm based in Alpharetta, Ga., that helps bedding manufacturer through the compliance process.
Ed Lilly concurs, saying manufacturers must plunge into the new regulations to fully grasp their depth and breadth. Lilly, former president and chief executive officer of Serta, is now managing partner of Lilly Management Group, a consulting firm in St. Charles, Ill.
“A lot of things in the regulations give (manufacturers) what they are supposed to do, but it doesn't tell them how to do it,” Lilly says. “But if they don't read the regulations, they don't even know where to start asking questions.”
Ryan Trainer, executive vice president and general counsel for the International Sleep Products Association, emphasizes that understanding California's open-flame standard—Technical Bulletin 603—isn't enough. Even though that state's regulation is similar to the federal standard, Part1633 has a number of different requirements, especially concerning paperwork and quality control. And the federal rule takes precedence over any mattress flammability rules that states might establish.
“The TB 603 requirements do not have any recordkeeping or quality assurance requirements at all,” Trainer says. “California doesn't have the authority to require mattress manufacturers to recall beds that were not made properly.”
The CPSC, however, can require a bedding manufacturer to stop making a product until it proves it can make it properly. And, in some cases, the feds can require that noncompliant products be withdrawn from the marketplace.
Don't skip the details
Sound recordkeeping practices by bedding manufacturers, including documenting the quality of incoming components, will go a long way toward ensuring compliance with the federal standard, Trainer says.
“If you have good records and good quality assurance controls that will give the CPSC some comfort that the product is being made properly,” he says. “Also, if the CPSC identifies noncompliant products, the records could help identify why the problem arose and what the scope of the problem is. Good records may help a manufacturer limit the scale and cost of any recall that might be necessary.”
For example, if a problem is traced to a bad lot of flame-retardant barrier and a mattress manufacturer can identify which mattresses contain that bad barrier, the recall could be limited to those lots. However, if the manufacturer's records lack that kind of paper trail, it may have to recall far more beds.
The CPSC does not specify exactly how manufacturers must meet the federal recordkeeping or quality assurance requirements.
“It's fairly wide open,” Trainer says. “And part of that is practical because every company is a little different. It is recognition by the CPSC that one size does not necessarily fit all.”
But to provide some guidance the CPSC has issued sample recordkeeping documents, which are available at ISPA's Web site, www.sleep
products.org/flammability and in the State & Federal Mattress Flammability Requirements Resource Toolkit produced by ISPA and the SPSC. The toolkit also can be found at the ISPA Web site.
The importance of recordkeeping to CPSC enforcement of its 33-year-old cigarette standard (16 CFR Part 1632) indicates how significant recordkeeping likely will be in its regulation of the open-flame standard, says Gordon Damant, director of InterCity Testing and Consulting in Sacramento, Calif., and a consultant to the SPSC.
“That's been the CPSC's main focus,” Damant says. “If manufacturers have had their records, which are required by law, when the CPSC inspector comes in, that's typically been the end of the story. CPSC's policy appears to have been that they would only pick up a product for testing if the records were not available. They did not routinely just pick up products.”
Part 1633 requires even more recordkeeping, including information about mattress prototypes and lot number verification of FR materials.
“My No. 1 recommendation would be to work with somebody familiar with the standard and who can provide them with a (system) they can use to automate their recordkeeping,” Damant says. “It may cost a little bit of money upfront, but if they do it right, it will alleviate a lot of headaches. I've told people that passing the actual 1633 test is the easiest part of the standard. But the recordkeeping, the labeling and the quality assurance provisions are quite extensive.”
Getting started
Several bedding manufacturers already making compliant beds have told BedTimes that the new open-flame rules require a shift in attitude for the entire industry—from making a sleep product to producing a safety product.
“A lot of the small to middle-sized manufacturers have really never had a quality assurance program,” Damant says. “They are just into building mattresses. They should work with somebody in the area of quality assurance requirements, particularly if it is something they are not familiar with.”
As most would expect, consulting firms are quickly popping up, offering services to manufacturers needing help with compliance.
For instance, Lilly's consulting firm offers a program it calls FR-PRO. Podratsky's Global Supply Chain Partners promotes its FR services under the banner Comprehensive Compliance Services.
“The idea of inspecting incoming raw materials and figuring out what to inspect has been a problem as we talk with manufacturers because they don't really know where to start,” Lilly says. “Quality assurance is a pretty straightforward thing and there are lots of people that know how to implement quality assurance programs. The important thing is consistency and that you are checking the right things at the right sampling rates. So, if somebody has a quality assurance program, an FR quality assurance program isn't going to be very complicated.
But if someone doesn't have a quality assurance program, they are really starting from scratch and probably need some assistance from a quality assurance specialist or from people they are friendly with who have a quality assurance system. A lot of this stuff will not be easy for anybody to just do on their own.”
Podratsky believes a crucial first step for some bedding manufacturers—even at this stage—is to sit down and carefully read the entire 1633 standard. Even a basic understanding of how the standard is laid out and the terms used will help companies understand how all the pieces fit together.
From there, they can move forward, selecting a manager or employee to spearhead the company's efforts and/or hiring a consultant or adviser to guide the company through several steps: designing and assembling product prototypes; open-flame testing; establishing quality assurance and recordkeeping systems; and educating and training the employees.
“Documentation of design criteria is new for all of us,” Podratsky says. “Controlling our processes, designs and FR solutions can protect us from unexplained variations when we are too far down the path of our compliance programs.”
Meeting the deadline
Most of the major bedding manufacturers are generally thought to be on target or ahead of schedule for complying with the July 1 date and a number report that they will be unveiling compliant lines at the Las Vegas furniture market Jan. 29-Feb. 2. Some companies, however, particularly small to mid-sized manufacturers and importers, may be playing catch-up.
There are other potential challenges throughout the bedding industry because of its brand structures—licensing groups trying to coordinate products at independently owned plants; major manufacturers attempting to assure uniformity at dozens of facilities spread throughout the country.
“Competing objectives can complicte the challenge,” Podratsky says. “On one side, we know that variation is the enemy of repeatable performance. On the other side, individual business owners want control of their own destiny. The challenge is to align and understand those two in a way that will be beneficial to the franchise owner and the brand. This new environment demands that licensed organizations work more closely together than ever in the past. ”
Gerry Borreggine, president and chief executive officer of Therapedic in Princeton, N.J., says his company's licensing structure of independently owned businesses hasn't created significant problems.
“We have been fortunate in that, although we are a group of independent entrepreneurs, our licensees have come together as a unified company in tackling the FR issue,” he says. “We are all on the same page and each has embraced a circumspect and airtight solution collectively.”
“The licensee factory really isn't going to be any different than an independent factory,” Lilly says. “They have other people in the organization they can talk to. They have resources at the corporate headquarters they can talk to. So they are not necessarily on their own. I think the independent people are the ones who have the most work to do. They are kind of going it alone.”
Maury O'Brien, director of research and development for Spring Air in Elk Grove Village, Ill., has focused on ensuring that all 17 of its plants in the United States and two other plants, in Canada and Mexico, are in close communication on flammability.
“We've identified the information tracking you need to have all the way to lot numbers of raw materials,” O'Brien says. “Our corporate IT (information technology) found a computer system that would match up with about six of our licensees, as far as linking up to their computer systems.”
This unified tracking is designed to provide inventory, work-in-process and quality assurance documentation companywide.
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Recordkeeping for importers & renovators
Regulations from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission place substantial new responsibilities and potential libilities on importers. To begin with, an importer must maintain all necessary records at a location in the United States, in English and “on an establishment-specific basis” so a CPSC staffer can examine them.
Documentation must include records of testing and manufacturing, prototype tests, pooling confirmation tests and quality assurance. Records also must include contact names and addresses of the company testing the products, the prototype developer, and each supplier of materials and components. And the mattress label must show the foreign manufacturer's name and address. Documentation for each bed model needs to be kept for at least three years after production for that particular prototype has ceased.
And the importer, who has the legal status of “manufacturer” for purposes of the open-flame standard, known as 16 CFR Part 1633, also will be responsible for corrective actions, such as product recalls.
Gordon Damant, director of InterCity Testing and Consulting in Sacramento, Calif., and a consultant for the Sleep Products Safety Council, sees at least one potential problem for importers. He says that some foreign producers have tested only mattresses made outside the United States but not the foundations, which they assemble or have assembled in the United States by a third party.
“The standard requires the mattress and foundation to be tested together as a set if it is intended to be sold as a set,” Damant says. “That is going to create a major problem for importers if they don't do the testing of the mattress and foundation together.”
Ed Scott, president of Stylution USA, has been involved in open-flame testing his company's beds for the past two years with Underwriters Laboratories and SGS Consumer Testing. Stylution USA imports its mattresses from its factories in China.
“Obviously, I cannot speak for all Asian manufacturers,” Scott says. “In China, just as in the U.S., there is a wide variance in technical expertise and manufacturing discipline between companies.”
Stylution USA has U.S. headquarters in the Chicago area and plans to maintain all required documentation for the imported beds there, Scott says.
Ed Lilly, managing partner of the St. Charles, Ill.-based, consulting group Lilly Management Group, says that importers will have some unique challenges.
“The hard part for the foreign mattress producer is that they have to figure out what to burn, how to burn it and how to get the raw materials,” Lilly says. “We've been contacted by a number of Chinese companies and are putting together programs to help them comply. China has its own unique set of circumstances.”
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Requirements for renovators
Under the federal open-flame rules, renovated mattresses are subject to the same standards as new mattresses—meaning that renovators too must comply with prototype testing, quality assurance, recordkeeping and other requirements. The standard applies to all mattresses renovated on or after July 1, so a renovator cannot claim exemption from the standard because the original mattress was produced prior to that date.
Because of the necessary documentation, added FR-material costs and testing procedures, the International Sleep Products Association expects the new standard will help rid the bedding market of unscrupulous renovators that have no intention of meeting the new rules, says Ryan Trainer, executive vice president and general counsel for the International Sleep Products Association.
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Suppliers stepping up to help
Many suppliers of FR components and services are putting their own quality assurance documentation, data storage and recordkeeping programs in place to aid bedding manufacturers in meeting traceability requirements of the new standard. Many also are expanding their traditional roles, providing not just FR components but acting much like consultants and advising manufacturers on broader compliance issues. BedTimes can't cover them all and mentions these only as examples.
For instance, Intertek ETL SEMKO Testing Services, which has a burn lab in Elmendorf, Texas, creates and maintains an electronic file of burn test results for manufacturers. “They don't have all of that paper to deal with,” says Jeannette Emmons, Intertek account manager.
Peter Philips, president of Hackensack, N.J.-based thread supplier Advance Fiber Technologies, says that in order for bedding manufacturers to be assured of consistent product quality, his company sought and received Underwriters Laboratories approval for its TEX 50 FR thread.
“The UL approval gives the mattress manufacturer a standard of performance and a guarantee of reliability,” Philips says. For traceability purposes, AFT performs its own quality control tests on each lot of thread. That lot is given an FR control number in numerical and barcode form, so a bedding manufacturer can have a record for every spool of thread that it used. Some bedding manufacturers plan to document their production with barcodes and our designation on every spool and carton will simplify that job.”
Supreme Quilting, a producer of FR-compliant zippered mattress covers, coverlets of for-assembly foundations and traditional panel borders headquartered in Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada, started its own research on mattress flammability four years ago, has undertaken more than 800 burn tests and works closely with several suppliers of FR-compliant nonwovens.
“The programs we are putting in place for 2007 for our clientele are free prototyping and profiling of all mattresses that we supply covers for,” says Paul Sharon, Supreme Quilting vice president. Its customers will be able to log onto the company's Web site with their own personal key code and download all bed prototypes that pertain to them, as well as streaming video of related burn tests.
Atlanta Attachment, a Lawrenceville, Ga.-based supplier of machinery, is offering bedding manufacturers a turnkey system called Satellite Plus. The system combines hardware and bedding software, creating a manufacturing control system designed to monitor and document FR materials, FR jobs in the production process and FR-related quality assurance factors, according to Atlanta Attachment President Hank Little.
Tom Taylor is manager of bedding business for Western Nonwovens, headquartered in Carson, Calif. In addition to supplying FR components, Western Nonwovens is providing broader compliance support, as well. And he offers some concluding advice for manufacturers: “If you keep good records of all the components that go into your beds, it will be difficult not to be shown in compliance. The No. 1 challenge for the industry is that they have never had to keep records like this in the past. That becomes a whole new mindset that hadn't been there before.”
