I am returning once again this month to the subject of international standards. They play an important role in international business and make a huge difference to the quality and reliability of products.
However a lot of hard work by a few dedicated representatives can be squandered by a combination of national self interest, inertia and lack of interest by voting nations, and finally by procedures in standards organisations. It may come as a surprise to many people that some of the most widely used standards are often prepared and pushed through the system by perhaps five or six working group members representing only four or five countries.
Some standards work very well and are widely accepted. Perhaps a good example is the whole range of ISO hydraulic cylinder standards that encompasses the cylinder construction, bearings and piston and rod seals.
In other areas, particularly if there is no direct commercial driving force it is often only possible to achieve a standard by writing something that everybody will accept, but maybe no one really wants. This way we end up with a lowest common denominator document that is often of very little use.
A source of serious frustration can be the procedures, and attitude of the standards organisations, especially ISO. An article in Sealing Technology in November 2004 highlighted several problems. If different parts of a standard are prepared at different times there does not seem to be a mechanism for subsequently re-grouping them to be revised as a whole. This can be a particular problem where national bodies take little interest and vote to retain flawed documents. The same lack of interest can see documents with serious errors voted through. Once a draft standard has been passed by a Working Group and the final draft prepared for voting by ISO Secretariat there are limited options for change of that final draft. But ISO are quite prone to introduce serious errors. If the majority of national bodies rubber stamp the document without closer examination it then gets rigidly translated into a standard.
The way out of this is either for there to be closer attention to these documents by individual national bodies, or a more pragmatic approach by ISO. The latter seems unlikely so I can only request that any of you involved pay close attention to documents before voting to accept them.