12 - Interoperability of standards worldwide

Abstract

This chapter discusses interoperability of standards worldwide. The main producers of national standards in Western Europe are the Great Britain, through the British Standards Institution (BSI); Germany, through the Deutsches Institut fur Normung (DIN); and France, through the Association FranCaise de Normalisation (AFNOR). Outside Europe, the most widely used standards come from the United States, through the American National Standards Institute (ANSI). Although these four are probably the most important series of standards, virtually every country with an industrial base has its own standards organization producing its own set of standards. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electrical Commission (IEC) are the standards bodies that most countries are affiliated to—via, that is, their own particular standards organization. ISO is mainly concerned with industrial standards, while IEC refers to electrical equipment. Similar to ITU documents, these ISO and IEC standards were initially published as recommendations, but they are at present accepted as international standards in their own right. The standards are drawn up by international technical committees that have been approved by ISO or IEC member countries, and now-a-days there are many hundreds of different ISO and IEC standards.