PSC Founder and President sets the bar for excellence
With more than 3,000 product safety approvals attained worldwide, Product Safety Consulting Inc. relies on its in-house team of experts to provide the highest levels of safety, quality and performance engineering consulting. And behind our successes in certification and testing is our management team, starting at the top with John Allen, Founder and President of PSC.
John holds a degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Illinois University, and even back then his passion and drive was carving out what the future vision of PSC would become. In 1988, John’s experience working with one of America’s leading inventors led him to the realization that product designers needed expert advice on navigating the often confusing, time consuming and rapidly changing product compliance environment. He also knew there was ripe opportunity in designing products with safety and compliance core to research, development and product release. John was formerly a compliance engineer for Mitsubishi Electric, and as many others entrepreneurs have done such as Apple and IBM, started PSC from his garage.
John is hands on and his first projects centered in the personal care industry working for the Epilady. He soon was deeply involved in a wide range of consumer, medical and industrial products, working with clients such as SC Johnson, Colgate, Alkco Lighting, Dial Corp., KaVo Dental, CR Baird, Gendex, Cleveland Motion Controls, Hamilton Beach, Singer, Conair, Helen of Troy and others. PSC continues to serve many leading companies across the globe with product certification, compliance and testing.
PSC Thought Leadership
Today, John is a recognized expert and thought leader in Lighting, Medical and Industrial Controls compliance standards. He serves on the Underwriters Laboratories (UL) Standards Technical Panels for ULE 106 (Luminaire Sustainability), UL 283 (Air Fresheners and Deodorizers).
John’s service to the IEEE’s Product Safety Engineering Society began before the company started. He and other colleagues started the Chicago Chapter of the Product Safety Technical Committee. The Technical Committee was part of the EMC Society at the time. John remained active while the Technical Committee turned into a Society working with the Chicago Chapter and eventually into the Society Board of Directors heading up Marketing. John is now President of the Society working his first term in 2017, ending in 2020 as Past President. John created the Compliance 101 Track for the Chicago ISPCE which he Chaired in 2015. The Compliance 101 Track is a regular educational session at ISPCE now with two full days of experts presenting to those new to compliance and/or are designers with compliance as one of many hats worn.
John is also renowned and sought-after public speaker and serves as a senior advisor on product safety to a number of global consumer products companies.