What are standards for?

Invisible but indispensible

Whenever you use your hair dryer, turn on your computer or heat a meal in your microwave oven, you set in motion a cascade of events that remain completely invisible to you but are indispensible to make the device work.

Defining the rules

Those seemingly instant events are governed by rules and specifications that help manufacturers design products that are safe and work together as expected, time and time again.

Thousands of experts

Those rules and specifications are developed with the help of thousands of experts from many organizations all around the world. Together, they work out and agree on all the details that help make products safer and more efficient. Then, to make certain that other engineers and future generations can use this knowledge in their work; all of those rules are written down and published in the form of international standards.