Standardization (American English) or standardisation (British English) is the process of implementing and developing technical standards based on the consensus of different parties that may include firms, users, interest groups, standards organizations and governments. Standardization can help maximize compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, efficiency, and quality. It can also facilitate a normalization of formerly custom processes.
In social sciences, including economics, the idea of standardization is close to the solution for a coordination problem, a situation in which all parties can realize mutual gains, but only by making mutually consistent decisions. Divergent national standards impose costs on consumers and can be a form of non-tariff trade barrier.
Objectives
The European Union's Regulation 1025/2012 on standardisation states that "The primary objective of standardisation is the definition of voluntary technical or quality specifications with which current or future products, production processes or services may comply."
History
Early examples
Standard weights and measures were developed by the Indus Valley civilization. The centralized weight and measure system served the commercial interest of Indus merchants as smaller weight measures were used to measure luxury goods while larger weights were employed for buying bulkier items, such as food grains etc. Technical standardization enabled gauging devices to be effectively used in angular measurement and measurement for construction. Uniform units of length were used in the planning of towns such as Lothal, Surkotada, Kalibangan, Dolavira, Harappa, and Mohenjo-daro. Shigeo Iwata describes the excavated weights unearthed from the Indus civilization: