What are Standards?
Have you ever wondered about standards for
the AIDC industry? Some of you are probably aware of the fact that they exist,
but you may not know where they come from, and who actually created them. In
this update, I will try to dispel some of the myths and help you to understand
the processes involved.
For more on the subject of Standards see the
links at the bottom of the page;
First thing to understand is that there are two
different types of standards.
Technology Standards
The first type of standard is a technology
standard or specification. This type of standard is the base line for the
creation of a product that uses the technology. An example of this is a barcode
symbology standard. The majority of
the symbology standards that exist today have been created by AIM (For a list of
AIM Symbology standards visit http://www.aimglobal.org/aimstore/default.htm).
Some of these barcode standards are currently being used as the basis for
standardization at the ISO/IEC JTC 1 level by SC31 (http://www.uc-council.com/sc31/home.htm).
Others where the international demand is not there will remain as AIM standards.
An explanation of how ISO standardization works
Other technologies are standardized by other
groups. At JTC 1 the Sub Committee responsible for card technology standards is
SC17. They are creating technology standards for magnetic stripe, smart card,
optical card, and contactless smart cards. You can visit the SC17 web site at http://www.sc17.com.
Biometrics standards are just starting to be
developed and a good reference to the work that is going on can be found at http://www.biometrics.org/html/standards.html.
RFID standards are being developed by SC31 along
with barcode, data syntax, and conformance standards. There is also work being
done at national levels by some countries. For a list of some of the
international, regional, and national standards bodies visit http://www.aimglobal.org/standards/stndrdorgs.htm
Bar Code standards have been developed
mostly by AIM (http://www.aimglobal.org)
though some of these have now been adopted by ISO. See a summary of Bar
Code Standards.
Application Standards
The second type of standard is what I will term
an application standard. In this
case a standard is written that will call upon a technology standard as the
basis for the implementation of an application. An example of this might be the
AIAG standard for Parts Identification and Tracking Application. This
application standard defines specifications for both direct marking and labeling
of individual parts, kits, assemblies/ subassemblies, unit packs and subpacks,
using both Code 39 linear bar codes and Data Matrix two dimensional symbols.
The standard describes technical requirements for the symbols, format
rules for the data in the symbols, and rules for printing the human-readable
interpretation.
In the case of an application standard it is
typically the application industry that writes the standard (as in the case
above where AIAG wrote the standard for automotive parts marking). The
application standard makes reference to the technology standard(s) (in this case
Code 39 and Data Matrix), so that the implementation of the symbology itself is
correct, but the application standard details how to use the symbology to encode
the needed information and what that information should be.
For a list of application standards developers
for various industries see http://www.aimglobal.org/resources/industry_organizations.htm.
You will see that this list of standards developers covers a wide variety of
applications and is probably not all inclusive. You should be able to find a
link to the standards you are looking for from this page.
Once you have the basic technology standard
written then it becomes available for everyone to use and interpret for their
particular use. An example of the use of the barcode technology standards would
be the use by the Health Industry Business Communications Council (HIBCC) (http://www.hibcc.org/barcodel.htm)
of various barcode symbologies in the health care industry. HIBCC have written a
series of application standards that use several symbologies to define how bar
code technology is used in healthcare. Each of these application standards
refers to a technology standard for the rules on creating the symbology, but
they add the rules for the data side of the barcode.
So, if you are looking for a standard for barcode
technology, then you need to look in two places, the symbology standard first
and then the application standard from the industry association. From the
American Production & Inventory Control Society Inc. (APICS) to the
Warehousing Education and Research Council (WERC) there will be an association
for your industry that has created an
application standard.
More
information on Standards:
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