The Importance of Industry Standards in Technology

We’re breaking down why adhering to industry standards are so important.

15:53 26 April 2022

There are a lot of reasons why industry standards are upheld, and why they’re continually revised, debated, and overhauled as technology and industries change. And it’s important, if you are in the process of creating something new, to research the industry standards to make sure you’re not falling behind on various areas that might affect your product. These areas can be standards of quality, safety, avoiding exploitation, etc. We’re breaking down why adhering to industry standards are so important. Follow our guide for all the details.

 

 

Quality standards

It’s important that any new products hitting the market meet certain quality standards. You can always get a more affordable version of something, but if you sacrifice material quality enough, you run the risk of sacrificing performance quality or undermining the point of the product.

 

For example, diesel has to go through vigorous ASTM D445 testing to determine how fast it will burn, what it can then be used for and what bi-products there are of the diesel.

 

Of course, a big part of quality standards is performance standards. With more of our lives spent on the internet, more physical items are being transferred to the virtual, but they still need to meet the performance standards of the physical – or in the case of a lot of internet tech, they need to meet new performance standards. There is no comparison for a cyber security system in the real world, for example, and so performance standards have to be established. Usually this is with testing by hackers paid to try to get past the cybersecurity system.

 

Safety standards

Another aspect of quality standards are the safety standards. A product that is low on quality runs the risk of not meeting safety standards. And in this day and age with regulations all over the place, it’s hard sympathize with the “unintended consequences” argument. If a company is caught with something dangerous as an ingredient in their product, or found damaging the environment with their operations, they often try to say that there was no malice, and it was simply ignorance. However, that is simply not an excuse anymore.

 

Businesses have a responsibility to their customers first, and yet it is a tale as old as time that the customers get pushed aside for the sake of profits. Industry standards are extremely important for keeping this in check. It protects the consumer, it protects the planet, and it protects the market from one bad brand tarnishing the entire industry.

 

Friendly competition

And of course, there are standards to be upheld when creating your products for the sake of the market. If you have spotted a gap in the market that you can fill ethically, your business will naturally rise to the top. Small businesses with a good idea are the biggest threats to big brands, as it should be. Industry standards allow for businesses to all play by the same rulebook, and to not meet them and send a product out anyway is an unfair advantage.