The role of ISO/TC 45 in standardization.

The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies, at present comprising about 100 members, one in each country. It was founded in 1947, after two separate attempts earlier in the century had failed to reach fruition.

The mission of ISO is to promote the development of standardization and related activities in the world with a view to facilitating the international exchange of goods and services and to developing cooperation in the spheres of intellectual, scientific, technological and economic activity.

ISO's work results in international agreements which are published as International Standards. At the present time there are about 9,200 of these published and available.

The scope of ISO covers standardization in all fields except electrical and electronic engineering, which are the responsibility of the International Electrotechnical Commission. The international standardization system composed of the ISO and the IEC is the world's largest non-governmental system for voluntary industrial and technical collaboration.

A member body of ISO is the national body "most representative of standardization in its country." It follows that only one such body for each country is accepted for membership of ISO. The majority of the ISO member bodies are governmental institutions or organizations incorporated by public law. The remainder have close links with the public administration in their own countries.

The above statements relating to ISO member bodies come from an official ISO publication. In effect the nature of ISO member bodies varies extensively. In many countries the member bodies are often a section of a government department, usually related to trade, industry and quality. In my own country, the United Kingdom, BSI, the British Standards Institution, is an entirely independent body created under Royal Charter, funded mostly by the sale of national standards, with some income derived from industrial contributions, and to a lesser extent, from government. In the USA the recognized body is the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), but because of the varied and diverse nature of standardization activity in the U.S., much of the input to, for example rubber in ISO technical committee 45, is provided by bodies such as the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) and the Rubber Manufacturers Association (RMA). However, submission of all ballots, comments, etc., must in the end formally pass through ANSI to be recognized by ISO.

A correspondent member of ISO is usually an organization in a developing country which does not yet have a fully developed national standardization activity. Correspondent members do not take an active part in the technical work, but are entitled to be kept fully informed about the work of interest to them. Nearly all the present correspondent members are governmental institutions,

ISO recently established a third category, subscriber membership, for countries with very small economies. These subscriber members will pay reduced membership fees that nevertheless allow them to be in contact with international standardization.

The technical work of ISO is carried out by technical committees (TCs), one for each field of activity.

While these technical committees represent an overall view of the range of activities in ISO, most of the detailed technical work is carried out in sub-committees (SCs) and, to an even greater degree, working groups (WGs).

All ISO member bodies are eligible for membership in any technical or sub-committees. They then have full voting rights in these committees, and nominate delegations, with a delegation leader, to meetings. The administration of these committees is the responsibility of an elected member body, which acts as the committee secretariat and nominates the chairman.

Working groups comprise a restricted number of individuals nominated for their expertise in that particular field. A working group is administered by a convener selected from among its membership who is responsible for all its activities, although a secretary may also be appointed if needed.

Although all the technical work of ISO is, as described above, administered by the individual member bodies, there is a central office in Geneva, Switzerland, which is responsible for overall coordination, editing, printing and distribution of published standards, and other related activities.

Like any organization involved in a wide level of consultation, there are many stages in the development and production of an International Standard, which to an outsider might appear confusing. However, these procedures have been developed over many years, and represent what is required in order to match the need to achieve full consultation of a very wide membership with the production of standards as quickly as possible. Needless to say, ISO is endlessly involved in considering ways of speeding up standards production.

A detailed description of all the production procedures would not be appropriate here, but basically they comprise a proposal stage, a preparatory stage, a committee stage, an approval stage and a publication stage.

There are various ways in which these procedures can be short circuited, depending on circumstances.

Two of the standards preparation stages require a vote in some form or another, with, particularly at the final acceptance stage, a precise requirement for acceptability of the standard. However, much of the work, especially in the early stages, depends on the achievement of consensus, which is defined as follows:

"General agreement, characterized by the absence of sustained opposition to substantial issues by any important part of the concerned interests and by a process that involves seeking to take into account the views of all parties concerned and to reconcile any conflicting arguments. Consensus need not imply unanimity."

The aims and types of international standardization

The aims of international standardization can be summarized as follows:

* Communication - the provision of a means of expression and of communication among all interested parties.

* Economy in effort, materials, energy - overall economy in terms of human effort, materials, power, etc., in the production and exchange of goods.

* Consumer protection - the protection of consumer interests through adequate and consistent quality of goods and services.

* Safety, health, environmental protection.

* Removal of technical barriers to trade.

There are probably three basic types of international standards, although the word probably indicates that this division is not rigid and that the types are open to various interpretations.

The first is the glossary of terms or vocabulary. This is the basic "language" for each particular field of activity, and is of prime importance to ensure that all the nationalities involved in subsequent standardization work are all saying, and meaning, the same thing. Glossaries are generally produced in the three official ISO languages, English, French and Russian, although often other countries develop their own glossaries, based on the ISO text, in their own language.

The second type is the test method. It goes without saying that, in order to facilitate international trade, it is essential that when a particular property or dimension is specified or described it is measured in the same way by all those involved in production, testing, quality control and purchase.

In most of the fields of activity in ISO, glossaries and basic test method standards are well established, and current efforts are devoted to revising and updating them, and introducing new methods where more sophisticated procedures have become available.

The third basic type of standard is the material or product specification. It could be said that this is by far the most important type of standard for fulfilling the aims of international standardization described earlier. However, it is also the area that leads to most problems and disagreements. It is obvious that throughout the whole world, with differing climates, social patterns, legislation and markets, needs for material and product specifications vary enormously. While ISO and its members realize that they have a commitment to produce all the specifications that they can, and on which they can obtain international agreement, there will be instances where a decision has to be taken to accept that there can never be agreement, and that efforts should be diverted to those projects where real progress can be made.

Relationships between international standards and national and regional standards and legislation

The international standards produced by ISO are not legally binding on any member nation. Their implementation is entirely voluntary, but in order for them to have any value at all it is important that this implementation is as wide and as full as possible. The only means that ISO Central Secretariat has to ensure this is encouragement.

However, the national standards bodies have an important role to play here. In my own country of the United Kingdom, for at least the past 15 years it has been policy to adopt, totally unaltered, as a national standard, any international standard on which the U.K. had submitted a positive vote. Unfortunately, this policy is not followed in many countries, with the result that differing national standards effectively contribute to barriers to international trade. It is obvious, therefore, that for international standards to become more effective than they are at present they need to be adopted nationally by more and more countries.

With regards to the relationship between national standards and national legislation, practice varies enormously between countries, according to the connection between the national standards body and government. Again, citing my own country as an example, most British standards are of a voluntary nature, although they are widely used. However, a small but significant proportion, particularly in areas relating to safety, health and consumer protection, are "called up" in the relevant national legislation, with the result that such products cannot be offered for sale without it being demonstrated in some form or other that they conform to the appropriate standard.

A recent development in international standardization has been the growth of interest in "regional" standardization, and I am referring particularly to the expansion in recent years in the activities of CEN, the European Organization for Standardization. I will not dwell on it here, other than to point out that the decision of the European Commission to base much of its newer legislation on the "New Approach" directives, which refer directly to European standards, has led to an enormous increase in the activity of what had been up until about five years ago a fairly minor player on the world scene.

ISO/TC 45 - rubber and rubber products

The ISO technical committee covering most non-tire rubber is ISO/TC 45 for rubber and rubber products, of which I have the honor to be the secretary. This technical committee was established in 1947 as one of the original ISO committees, and has flourished ever since, to the extent that it is consistently in the top five of all committees in terms of standards produced. This success is entirely due to the ceaseless efforts and enthusiasm of its membership. Meetings are held annually, a process that maintains a momentum which keeps the work program flowing.

There are four sub-committees in ISO/TC 45. SC 1 for rubber and plastics hoses has the U.K. as its secretariat, and contains four working groups. SC 2 for physical and degradation tests has Sweden as its secretariat and has two working groups. SC 3 for raw materials runs to six working groups, with Canada as secretariat. SC 4 for miscellaneous products has Malaysia as secretariat and has six working groups. In addition there are six working groups that report directly to the technical committee itself.

During the course of the annual meetings almost every working group meets, so that reports can be submitted during the week to the parent committee and appropriate actions approved. The technical committee itself meets in plenary session, and additionally there are two sessions of the important leaders and conveners meeting, at which policy matters are discussed. The structure of the technical committee itself, and its work program, are kept under constant review.

ISO/TC 45 is responsible at the present time for over 300 published standards. Simply to keep these up-to-date and relevant is obviously a major undertaking. The current work program of the committee comprises approximately 270 items, partly new work and partly the revision of existing standards.

The major glossary of terms is ISO 1382, which covers general rubber terms, although there are other glossaries for specific products. A considerable proportion of the other standards is devoted to chemical and physical test methods, and methods specifically for raw materials and products such as cellular materials, footwear, coated fabrics and hoses.

The remaining standards are specifications for products such as footwear, hoses, rubber threads, sealing rings, rubber covered rollers, and, to be published shortly, loves for medical applications. Two major rubber product areas, tires and mechanical contraceptives, have their own separate ISO technical committees, ISO/TC 31 and ISO/TC 157, respectively. ISO/TC 45 maintains liaison contacts with many other ISO technical committees working in related fields. This is an important requirement, and often one that is difficult to accomplish successfully. Failure to maintain efficient liaison can lead to duplication of work and disagreements over responsibilities.

Thoughts on the future

It is difficult to foretell with any degree of confidence what the future of international standardization holds. ISO/TC 45 has flourished since its formation in 1947, and is now responsible for the definitive collection of international standards for rubber. It has a responsibility to maintain that collection and to replace it and renew it as technology, the industry and user requirements dictate.

The strength and future of the committee lies in its membership of national delegates. The responsibility for ensuring that the quality and quantity of these remains sufficiently high depends on the national standards bodies, who themselves are entirely dependent primarily on the industry to make these people available. Industry throughout the world has many other priorities, not least survival. Delegates to ISO meetings know the importance of international standardization; their very presence is testament to this. But there is still a great need for much more persuasion of those not directly involved, particularly those with financial control rather than technical interests, to make them aware of the enormous benefits that they, their company and the industry in general can gain by the encouragement of increased participation in this work.

I would like to conclude with a polite personal request to the U.S., based on my experience of more than 23 years in international standardization. As mentioned earlier, in the United Kingdom all ISO standards approved nationally are adopted unaltered as a national standard. Increasingly, this situation will soon apply to all the countries of the European Union, when CEN standards are derived directly from their ISO equivalents. It would be beneficial to us all if ASTM could find a way of following this lead by adopting ISO standards in a similar manner.