Standardization is one of mankind's greatest inventions. It is necessary to protect the interests of the state and consumers in terms of the quality of products, services and processes. What are the main goals and principles of standardization? How is this process implemented in practice?
The pursued goals (tasks)
Standardization is done to:
- To increase the level of safety of the health or life of citizens, to ensure the safety of property of legal entities and individuals, as well as the state or municipal organizations, to maintain environmental safety.
- To ensure scientific and technological progress.
- To increase the safety level of facilities, taking into account the risk of emergencies of a technical and natural nature.
- Streamline the use of resources.
- To increase the competitiveness of work, services, products.
- Ensure interchangeability of the created products.
- Compare the results of tests, studies, measurements, as well as economic, statistical and technical data.
About principles and functions
As a science and type of activity, standardization is built on certain foundations. They are called principles. Among them, twelve are distinguished. They will be grouped and all considered. In addition to them, the functions that standardization performs to achieve certain technical, economic and social goals will be considered. But let's talk about everything in order.
About application
The first two principles that we consider will relate to their use:
- Voluntary application of standards, as well as providing opportunities for their uniform use. What does it mean? National standards are adopted on a voluntary basis equally. At the same time, the place or country of origin, the specifics of the product life cycle, the provision of services, the performance of work, and the characteristics of transactions should not have an effect. This is how standardization principles work for an organization.
- Using international standards as the basis for national ones. An exception to this are only cases when this is not possible due to geographical and climatic features or the technological specifics of production.
It is not always possible to use principles and methods of standardization. Sometimes the reason for this may be certain political motives.
Balance, consistency, dynamism
Now let's touch on the principles themselves. Consider the following three:
- Balancing the interests of the parties that develop, manufacture, provide and consume goods (services). In another way, this principle provides for the maximum consideration of all legitimate interests that the listed parties possess. So, it is necessary to take into account the capabilities of the manufacturer of the product (service provider) and the requirements of the consumer. At the same time, a search for consensus is being conducted, that is, a provision of general agreement is reached when there are no objections to the most important issues of the majority of representatives of interested parties. Ideal - you need to take into account the opinions of all and bring together the differing points of view. Although achieving complete unanimity is not necessary here.
- Consistency. In this case, it is understood that each object should be considered as an integral part of a more complex system. Consider a small example. We have a bottle. This is a consumer packaging. It is part of a more complex box system. It, in turn, is placed in a container that is loaded onto a vehicle (for example, a sea vessel). Consistency involves combining all these elements and considering them as one complex system.
- Dynamism. Advanced development of the standard. As you know, any norms are used to simulate existing laws. But one cannot ignore scientific and technological progress, which is making changes to management processes and technology. Therefore, it is necessary to adapt the standards to the ongoing changes. Dynamic refers to the periodic verification of accepted standards and the introduction of necessary changes to them. To minimize exposure to the moral standard, care must be taken to ensure that it is ahead of society.
About efficiency
The basic principles of standardization provide at the same time and the adequacy of the approach in creating common rules. After all, you can create the most "environmentally friendly" requirements, but can enterprises pull them? Consider a small group of three principles that do this:
- It is unacceptable to create obstacles to production processes, the circulation of products, the provision of services, the performance of work more than is necessary to achieve goals. That is, it is necessary to take into account the willingness of organizations and countries to fulfill increased requirements. Otherwise, it may paralyze their activities.
- The effectiveness of standardization. Its application should provide a certain social or economic effect. For example, saving resources, increasing reliability, information and technical compatibility, ensuring the safety of people's health and life, and the environment.
- Harmonization. This principle provides for standardization so that it does not conflict with technical regulations. Ensuring the identity of documents that belong to the same object, allows you to improve the situation without creating problems in the trade.
Bureaucratic moments
And the last group of principles has four components:
- Clarity of wording. If the rules can be interpreted ambiguously, this indicates the presence of serious defects.
- Complexity in the processing of interconnected objects. The quality of the finished product depends on the raw material, material, semi-finished product and / or components. Therefore, standardization should take into account all stages of product creation / service provision.
- Objectivity verification requirements. It is necessary to put forward such requests that can be successfully and explicitly verified. This applies to compatibility, interchangeability, safety for health, life, property, environment. An objective check is carried out by technical means (for example, instruments or methods of chemical analysis). In addition, it can be carried out using expert or sociological methods. As a confirmation of its successful passage, certificates of conformity or conclusions of supervisory bodies of state power are used.
- Providing the required conditions for the uniform application of accepted standards.
What features?
Standardization to achieve technical, economic and social goals performs:
- Ordering function. It involves overcoming an extraordinary variety of objects. Allows you to simplify and limit your bloated product range or documentation.
- Security function. It ensures the safety of the consumer of goods and services, as well as the manufacturer and the state. It unites the efforts of mankind in terms of protecting nature from the technogenic impact of civilization.
- Resource-saving feature. It is due to the limited natural, material, labor and energy resources. Establishes a limit on their spending.
- Communicative function. It is aimed at ensuring communication and interaction between people. This is necessary to overcome barriers and promote economic, scientific and technological cooperation.
- Civilizing function. It helps to improve the quality of goods and services with a gradual improvement in living standards. As an example, we can cite the requirements for the presence / concentration of harmful substances in drinking water, food products and everything else that affects a person's life expectancy.
- Information function. It is aimed at providing material production, science and technology, as well as other areas with measurement standards, samples, regulatory documents as carriers of valuable technological and managerial data.
- The rulemaking and enforcement function. It manifests itself in the form of legitimization of requirements and universal use after the document receives legal force.
Preparatory work
How does it all start? Launched processes are based on the scientific principles of standardization. That is, they are not taken from somewhere from the ceiling, but are accepted on the basis of certain developments. At the same time, they can be verified using the tools of the theoretical and empirical scientific method. Indeed, otherwise, unpleasant consequences may arise, which will be very difficult to eliminate. Whereas the use of the scientific method minimizes the likelihood of making a mistake.
About increasing efficiency
Let's take a few more words on how the principles and functions of standardization improve the result. The application of certain norms should always be aimed at a specific economic or social effect. In the first case, this is expressed in saving resources, increasing reliability, information and technical compatibility. Under the social effect is understood to ensure the safety of the environment, human health and life. As international practice shows, it is beneficial for the state to develop this sphere, because here the impact is 1:10. That is, one profit ruble makes ten profits. Therefore, all these principles, the conformity of standardization and the growth of efficiency are only at hand for us if we approach them adequately.
International standards
The Russian Federation is not very different in this regard. This is largely due to the fact that for a large number of state standards, international ones were chosen as the basis. Sometimes, as is the case with IFRS, they can be recommended for use. There are also those who come into a certain conflict with international developments.
Conclusion
So the goals (tasks) and principles of standardization were considered. Of course, the information provided is only enough to get a general idea of what and how. If you need to understand a specific area, you will need to additionally study existing information and deal with it. Only goals remain unchanged and constant here - to make people's lives more convenient and comfortable.