STANDARDIZATION, means setting up standards by which extent, quantity, quality, value, performance and service may be gauged. Instances are the mile, the hour, the pound, the bushel, and the dollar.
Many individual manufacturers have standardized their prod ucts to gain the advantages and economies of mass or volume production. Several of these manufacturers maintain standards departments in their organizations to supervise design and pro duction with the view to effecting maximum interchangeability between parts entering into the finished product, by securing con sistent uniformity in their size and other essential characteristics. The standards established by one company are sometimes, though not always, of interest to another company.
Standardization offers many advantages to manufacturers, dis tributors and consumers. "(I) Standardization stabilizes pro duction and employment, since it makes it safe for the manufac turer to accumulate stock during periods of slack orders, which he cannot safely do with an unstandardized product. (2) It re duces selling cost. Possibilities of reduced costs are generally even greater in distribution than in production. (3) It enables buyer and seller to speak the same language and makes it possible to compel competitive sellers to do likewise. (4) In thus putting tenders on an easily comparable basis it promotes fairness in com petition, both in domestic and in foreign trade. (5) It lowers unit costs to the public by making mass production possible, as has been so strikingly shown in the standardization of incandescent lamps and automobiles. (6) By simplifying the carrying of stocks, it makes deliveries quicker and prices lower. (7) It decreases liti gation and other factors tending to disorganize industry, the bur den of which ultimately falls upon the public. (8) It eliminates indecision both in production and utilization—a prolific cause of inefficiency and waste. (9) By concentrating on fewer lines, it enables more thought and energy to be put into designs, so that they will be more efficient and economical. (10) By bringing out the need of new facts in order to determine what is best and to secure agreement on moot questions, it acts as a powerful stimu lus to research and development, and it is thus in decided contrast to crystallization resulting from fixity of mental attitude. (I I) It
is one of the principal means of getting the results of research and development into actual use in the industries. ( 12) It helps to eliminate practices which are merely the results of accident or tradition and which impede development. (13) By concentration on essentials and the consequent suppression of confusing elements intended merely for sales effect, it helps to base competition squarely upon efficiency in production and distribution and upon intrinsic merit of product. (14) Standardization is increasingly important for the maintenance and development of foreign trade. (15) The efficiency of competing countries, increasing through national standardization programmes, is likely to stiffen competi tion between those countries. (16) Joint effort in bringing about standardization within and between industries almost invariably leads to better understanding and to beneficial co-operation along other lines—a step toward the integration of industries" (Mechan ical Engineering, Aug. 1926).
Practically every major American industry has co-operated with its allied or related industries in standardizing products or com modities of mutual interest. This group movement is one of the outstanding post-War developments in America.
The American Engineering Standards Committee.—In order to make standardization on a national scale possible, a clear ing house or co-ordinating agency has been established to bring about systematic participation by, and co-operation of, the many organizations and associations individually working on the general problem. This agency is the American Engineering Standards committee, a federation of 33 national organizations, including nine major engineering societies, 18 national industrial associa tions and six departments of the Federal Government.