The challenges of standardization.
Standardization: an economic challenge
Economic dynamics have always been driven by the will of cutting
expenses either by means of economies of scale yielded by mass production,
or economies of scope related to a diversification of production,
or economies of network resulting from an increased number of companies
adopting a given technology. As a process for developing a reference
system allowing an objective evaluation of products or services,
standardization is an essential tool to cut costs.
Standardization aims at providing reference documents containing
solutions to technical and commercial problems for products, equipment
or services. A major issue for the whole community, it is a tool
fostering dialogue between manufacturers, customers and other partners.
These jointly define a common vocabulary, dimensions, characteristics,
testing methods, various rules facilitating exchanges (like interchangeability
of products) and a reduction in variety generating economies of scale.
Standardization: a societal challenge
The major topics currently covered by standardization
actually reflect the socioeconomic concerns of the beginning of the
21st century, i.e. quality, interoperability of systems, health and
safety, environmental protection, sustainable development.
Standardization has recently greatly developed with the increase
of the society's requirements for quality. While it is easy to compare
two prices, comparing the quality of two products is much more difficult.
The existence of a universally accepted reference document for quality
management, for example the standards ISO 9000, provides worthwhile
clarification.
European integration has also played an important role in the development
of standardization. In order to facilitate the free movement of products
within Europe and to avoid barriers to trade, the European Community,
which has the political power, has enacted Directives defining objectives
to be reached in terms of performances, harmful effects, safety through
essential requirements (rules that must be observed in order to be
authorised to sell), and leaves it to the economic partners to define
the ways and means to reach these objectives using standards. This
approach has opened up new untapped areas to standardization, such
as safety of machinery, pressure equipment,…
Today standardization operates at world level. Its sphere of activity
widens with the development of new standardizing documents. It is
now faced with the emergence of technical documents which do not
always result from a comparable level of consensus. Therefore, standardization
must demonstrate its capacity of innovation to meet the market requirements
without departing from the fundamental principles of consensus, coherence,
quality, transparency, whereby a standard is a legitimate reference
for everybody.
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