The International Organization for Standardization, or ISO, is a non-governmental organization that develops technical standards, contributing to making the development, manufacturing, and supply of both supplies and services, cleaner and safer. Providing government with standards regarding health and safety issues, they also promote fair trade between counties. We tend to take many things for granted; we always expect simple objects, like screws, to do the job that we intend them for. ISO ensures just that, and sets standards that make things better for all of our society, as a whole.
With a Central Secretariat in Geneva, Switzerland, ISO is a network of standard institutes in 146 different countries. Dating back to 1947, ISO was created by 25 delegates who determined that a new international organization was needed "to facilitate the international coordination and unification of industrial standards". Due to the fact that International Organization for Standardization would have different initials in different languages, it was decided to use a word derived from the Greek word isos. For this reason, no matter what country you are in, the short form of the organization is always ISO, which means equal.
To date, ISO has created nearly 14,000 international standards, covering things like agriculture, mechanical engineering, construction, medical devices and information technology developments. While the majority of ISO standards are geared towards certain products, ISO 900 and 14000 deal with quality and environmental management, and are considered "generic management system standards. By generic, this means that they are a list of standards which all products and workplaces must meet, regardless of whether they produce a product or service, and regardless of where they are located. By maintaining customer regulations, as well as doing what they can minimize harmful effects on the environment, ISO standards help ensure that our world is a much better place. |
