ABSTRACT
Overview In order for an organization to be competitive in today’s world, its design teams should understand, and help create, the standards that control how their products and services are designed, produced, and sold to customers. Standards form the basis of the rules and evaluation criteria organizations must jointly use, as an industry, to regulate their product and service performance. Standards also impact suppliers, customers, and a local society. As a result, standards of various types have been created for almost every product and service produced in the world today. An advantage of using industry standards is that they are usually well written by volunteers from the various stakeholder organizations within an industry based on many years of experience. Also, they contain very useful information regarding a consensus of the best practices of how a product or service should be designed, measured, and produced. is information enables a new entrant into an industry to quickly obtain information on how to efficiently develop and test its products and services to compete. However, organizations must also investigate and develop proprietary
information that is relevant to their specific needs. Internal standards that exceed those minimally required by an industry group may also help an organization differentiate its performance from that of its competitors. Also, to the extent an organization satisfies local standards relative to its competitors, its products and services will be attractive to customers. is is especially true in competitive environments in which local markets are characterized by a high level of cultural and demographic diversity. Table 20.1 recommends that an organization attain leadership positions within the standards committees impacting its industry.
