Fundamentals of Business

Usage

Common use of the word standard implies that it is a universally agreed upon set of guidelines for interoperability. In the context of business information exchanges, standardization refers to the process of developing data exchange standards for specific business processes using specific syntaxes.

These standards are usually developed in voluntary consensus standards bodies such as the United Nations Center for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT CEFACT), the World Wide Web Consortium W3C W3C, and the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards (OASIS). A standard can be open or proprietary proprietary.

In a military standardisation is defined as the development and implementation of concepts, doctrines, procedures and designs to achieve and maintain the required levels of compatibility compatibility, interchangeability or commonality in the operational, procedural, material, technical and administrative fields to attain interoperability. There are at least four levels of standardization. In order they are: compatibility, interchangeability, commonality and reference. These standardization processes create compatibility, similarity, measurement and symbol standards.

In supply chain management management, standardization refers to approaches for increasing commonality of part, process, product or procurement. Such change will enable delayed making of manufacturing or procurement decisions, thus reducing variability found in having many non standard components. Every standard is a specification and not all specifications are standards, a standard is simply a specification intended for recurrent use.

Specification
Exact statement of the particular needs to be satisfied, or essential characteristics that a customer requires (in a good, material, method, process, service, system, or work) and which a vendor must deliver. Specifications are written usually in a manner that enables both parties (and/or an independent certifier) to measure the degree of conformance.

They are, however, not the same as control limits (which allow fluctuations within a range), and conformance to them does not necessarily mean quality (which is a predictable degree of dependability and uniformity). Specifications are divided generally into two main categories:

Performance specifications conform to known customer requirements such as keeping a room's temperature within a specified range.