Standards

Standards

Standards provide the knowledge that organizations need to succeed, and deliver it in concentrated form. They can offer a set of powerful tools to make your organization more innovative and productive.

Standards provide the knowledge that organizations need to succeed, and deliver it in concentrated form. They can offer a set of powerful tools to make your organization more innovative and productive.
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View all standards
View all standards
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What is a standard?

In essence, a standard is an agreed way of doing something. It could be about making a product, managing a process, delivering a service or supplying materials – standards can cover a huge range of activities undertaken by organizations and used by their customers.

Standards are the distilled wisdom of people with expertise in their subject matter and who know the needs of the organizations they represent – people such as manufacturers, sellers, buyers, customers, trade associations, users or regulators.

Our portfolio extends to more than 30,000 current standards. They are designed for voluntary use so it’s up to you – you’re not forced to follow a set of rules that make life harder for you, you’re offered ways to do your work better.

Standards are knowledge. They are powerful tools that can help drive innovation and increase productivity. They can make organizations more successful and people’s everyday lives easier, safer and healthier.

Who uses standards

Organizations of all sizes use standards to compete more effectively, from small businesses to multinationals and governments. For businesses that operate globally, applying international standards is one of the best ways to demonstrate quality, compatibility and consistency, and helps create a common language upon which to trade. Using standards benefits government organizations in many ways, from streamlining their own processes to helping build alternative approaches to regulation. 

If you’re a small business, you know that you have to work harder to prove yourself against larger organizations. Whether you want to monitor and improve product quality, harden up your IT system security, implement a complaints management system, vet potential employees or give customers extra peace of mind, using standards can help.

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Benefits of using standards

Standards are a tried and tested way to work more efficiently and effectively. They help organizations to improve their performance, reduce their risk and help them be more sustainable. Using our standards can help you improve the quality of your services, manage projects so they meet deadlines and stay within budget, strengthen the resilience of your IT systems, certify your products so they attract more customers, manage your assets better, and build successful collaborative relationships with other organizations.

Using standards systematically prepares you in advance for threats. Understanding the risks you face and then acting to mitigate them, you become a tougher, more resilient business, able also to respond to and build upon new opportunities.

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Different types of standard

Standards come in a number of different forms. Some tell you how to do something in great detail, others give more general information, and others simply define terms. 

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How are standards made?

Standards are put together by groups of industry experts, consumers, research organizations, government departments and more, all working together. 

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What do standards do?

Standards cover a range of subjects from construction, energy management, health and safety, to nanotechnology and much more. They can be very specific, such as to a particular type of product, or general such as management practices.

The point of a standard is to provide a reliable basis for people to share the same expectations about a product or service. This helps to:

  • facilitate trade
  • provide framework for achieving efficiencies
  • enhance consumer protection and confidence

How organizations use standards

  • Quality management standards help them work more efficiently and reduce product failures
  • Environmental standards help reduce waste and be more sustainable
  • Health and safety standards help reduce accidents in the workplace
  • IT security standards help keep sensitive information secure
  • Construction standards help build homes
  • Energy standards help cut energy consumption
  • Food safety standards help prevent food contamination

Standards and regulation

Standards are not the same thing as government regulations, but they’re often used in legislation to provide the technical detail. Following a standard doesn’t guarantee that you’re within the relevant laws. Standards rarely cite the law, as legislation could change within the lifetime of the standard.