O.C. Firms Collaborate to Meet Foreign Standards : Commerce: Companies find they must win certification under rules of 12-nation European Community to do business. Officials from 22 companies establish support group.

Until recently, Emulex Corp. quality manager Bob Tripodi wasn’t too concerned about trade developments in Western Europe.

After all, the governments of the 12-nation European Community have said that unifying their economies by the end of 1992 would not shut the door to imports from U.S. companies such as his.

But Tripodi lately has found that Emulex’s European customers--which accounted for $51 million of the Costa Mesa computer components maker’s $150 million in sales last year--increasingly are asking the company to get certified under a new set of quality control standards that the EC plans to adopt next year.

“We have some European customers who have asked us to be certified by January, 1993, or we can kiss them goodby,” said Tripodi, who has found many of his counterparts in Orange County going through the same dilemma.

The purpose of the certification is to ensure that a company’s products meet minimum quality standards agreed upon by all 12 of the European Community nations.

In an effort to avoid being shut out of that market next year, Tripodi on Wednesday joined more than 50 other quality control managers from 22 Orange County companies to establish a support group to help members get through the EC certification process and to share information on the latest EC quality control regulations.

So complex a subject is this that the group--whose members include such firms as AST Research Inc., Beckman Instruments, McGaw Inc. and Rockwell International--plans to meet monthly.

Beckman is the only Orange County company currently certified under EC standards for medical devices.

The EC standards are similar to U.S. control standards, but there are enough European variances to make them tough for U.S. companies to implement, Tripodi said.

Among other things, the certification process can take up to 18 months to complete--which would carry Emulex and other companies that have not yet started it well past the January, 1993, target date.

To win EC approval of its quality control methods, a company must undergo rigorous examination of the design or manufacturing process of products.

EC officials so far are requiring quality control certification for medical devices; construction products, such as prefabricated roofing trusses; telecommunications terminal equipment, including computer peripherals; gas appliances; industrial safety equipment and commercial scales.

European companies must comply with these standards by Jan. 1, and many are requiring their U.S. suppliers to meet them also, said Gerard M. Cohen, director of customer support at Archive Technology Inc. in Costa Mesa.

“This is no longer a matter of if a company has to be certified, but of when it should be,” Cohen said. “I’m seeing more European and American customers requesting that we be certified by an EC country to sell our products to them.”