Why standards matter

Standards make an enormous and positive contribution to most aspects of our lives.

Standards ensure desirable characteristics of products and services such as quality, environmental friendliness, safety, reliability, efficiency and interchange ability - and at an economical cost.

When products and services meet our expectations, we tend to take this for granted and be unaware of the role of standards. However, when standards are absent, we soon notice. We soon care when products turn out to be of poor quality, do not fit, are incompatible with equipment that we already have, are unreliable or dangerous.

When products, systems, machinery and devices work well and safely, it is often because they meet standards. And the organization responsible for many thousands of the standards which benefit the world is ISO.

When standards are absent, we soon notice.

What standards do

ISO standards:

• make the development, manufacturing and supply of products and services more efficient, safer and cleaner
• facilitate trade between countries and make it fairer
• provide governments with a technical base for health, safety and environmental legislation, and conformity assessment
• share technological advances and good management practice
• disseminate innovation
• safeguard consumers, and users in general, of products and services
• make life simpler by providing solutions to common problems