In this conversation we profile Rich Reitz, the Director of Engineering at Retlif Testing Laboratories, who is responsible for the technical and quality oversight of all testing operations at Retlif’s three ISO/IEC 17025 accredited testing facilities, providing independent EMC, radio, product safety, and environmental simulation testing services.
Reitz is an iNARTE certified EMC Accredited Test Laboratory Engineer, EMC Engineer, and MIL-STD Specialist and was a member of the National Cooperation for Laboratory Accreditation (NACLA) Board of Directors from 2001 to 2017, having served as secretary, vice president, and president. In addition to these many years of service to NACLA, he served on the American Council of Independent Laboratories (ACIL) Board of Directors and chaired the Conformity Assessment Section, its EMC subcommittee, and the U.S. Council of EMC Laboratories. During his service to ACIL, he has received the Preston S. Millar Award on multiple occasions for his contributions to the EMC testing industry. Reitz is a senior member of the IEEE EMC Society as well as a member of the Philadelphia chapter of the EMC Society and its Executive Committee.
In this profile, we chatted about the changes in the EMC field, the value and flexibility of iNARTE certification, and the lessons and advice he would offer the next generation of EMC professionals from his forty-plus year career.
EXEMPLAR GLOBAL: Tell me a little bit about you, about your educational background, and how you got started in this part of your career.
RICHARD REITZ: Back in the early 1980s, I don’t know that anyone truly planned to go into electromagnetic compatibility. There weren’t EMC programs at any of the universities that I knew of at the time. At that point, I was a senior in high school and there was a job-shadowing program that our cooperative work experience teacher had set up. She told me that there was a local company that I could shadow for the day. I went there and saw that they were performing conducted emission tests on a bunch of different accessories for the ColecoVision game system, which I found totally fascinating. Testing video games at work! I enjoyed the day there, but unfortunately, they had nothing available right then. Six months later, however, my teacher reached back out to me and told me that the local company I had shadowed at had a part-time technician/shipping clerk position available. That company was Retlif, and that’s where my EMC career started.
EG: Wow, so you’ve been with Retlif all this time!
RR: Yes, I’ve been with Retlif for 41 years, and I’ve seen EMC change drastically during that time. I worked part-time with Retlif through college and received my associate’s and bachelor’s of technology degrees in electrical engineering from the State University of New York–Farmingdale. In the mid-1990s, I went back to school and earned my bachelor’s of science degree from SUNY–Farmingdale as well.
EG: You mentioned that you’ve seen EMC evolve a lot during your career. What are some of the changes you’ve seen that have really affected the industry?
RR: One of the biggest changes has been the advent of the CE marking process. When we first started, immunity or susceptibility testing was specifically reserved for United States military standard projects. Most people thought this was a quality-related test, but we applied it from the conformity-assessment or regulatory standpoint. Working in the laboratory and with industry to understand these new requirements, gear up the lab, get the equipment, and train the personnel was one of the major hurdles in my career.
Another big change has come in the advancements in MIL-STD-461, which evolved from 461C when I was first starting out to 461H, which is now out in a draft revision. That creates changes in measurement techniques, field leveling, and the methods themselves.
So, there have been drastic changes on the testing side and the requirement side, but also, even more prominently, on the equipment we’re testing. Clock speeds, for example. Whoever thought in the 1980s that we would have more than a gigahertz clock frequency? Back then, 8 megahertz was an oscillator, not multiple gigahertz like today.
MR: If someone had a background in electrical engineering and was certified as an assessor to the ISO/IEC 17025 standard, do you believe that adding iNARTE personnel certification could also be a benefit?
RR: I would think so. In fact, in addition to my day job here at Retlif, I also perform assessments to ISO/IEC 17025. So yes, iNARTE certification is a logical next leap for an engineer who is involved in this space.
EG: How and when did you first become certified to iNARTE?
RR: I was grandfathered in my certification under the accredited laboratory test engineer program in the mid-1990s. I’ve been certified since the beginning of that program.
EG: What has iNARTE certification done for you in your career, in terms of job opportunities, contacts you’ve made, etc.?
RR: I think that the accredited test lab certification certainly gave me more credibility, both to management as I was growing within the organization, and to external customers. Several of the spaces we operate in require iNARTE-certified EMC engineers to work on their projects, so that’s opened doors. For Retlif as an organization, and with me being part of the organization, the iNARTE certification has been critical to maintain a presence in some of those spaces.
EG: For those who are new to this industry, what advice would you offer to help them grow and advance in their careers?
RR: As mentioned, back in the day there were no EMC programs that you could go to school for. Now, however, if you want to go into the EMC engineering field, there are many universities out there that offer excellent programs in this space. But once you’re done with that and you begin to work in the industry, you need to get involved and stay current. iNARTE certification is a great way to show your ability and it is a good credential. I would also recommend IEEE’s EMC Society, the American Council of Independent Laboratories has an EMC working group, there are standards committees like ANSI C63, and there are EMC symposiums. Another great resource is equipment manufacturers, who offer YouTube videos showing details of test equipment, spectrum analyzers, receivers, antennas, etc. There is so much out there, so stay current and stay involved.
iNARTE has helped me a great deal throughout my career. In my current position, it continues to help Retlif and myself nurture and develop our technical staff. Our team members lead by example: Our president, vice president, and me as director of engineering are all iNARTE certified, and we provide incentives to staff members who wish to pursue iNARTE certification. Most of our technicians and engineers are certified at some level now. I think that those who gain that certification are, in general, more capable and competent than their non-certified counterparts.
EG: Finally, what do you see as emerging trends in the industry that people need to be thinking about now?
RR: I think the biggest thing is emerging technologies on the radio side. Although it wasn’t traditionally part of the EMC world, everything has a radio in it now, and there are concerns with wireless power transfer, with multiple radios operating in devices for RF exposure, specific absorption rate, and more. Those are areas that aren’t going away, and as more and more products become wireless, there needs to be an expansion of the knowledge base of a typical EMC engineer to include those radio aspects. I think that’s critical moving forward for an engineer in this space.
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