Jaipur celebrates World Standards Day

15 October, 2012

A seminar was organised at Standards Promotion and Quality Control Centre in Jaipur on the occasion of World Standards Day (WSD). While speaking to the participants of the seminar, Dr Anant Sharma, member of the joint working group of World Standards Organisation, said that standardrisation helps in reducing the wastage in production of goods and services along with giving the consumers a sense of satisfaction and raising the credibility of the producers' goods and provider of services.

THE WSD is celebrated internationally each year on October 14 to create awareness about quality of goods and services as well as honour the efforts of the thousands of experts who develop voluntary standards. On this day, campaigns are organised by regulators, industry and consumers to draw attention toward the importance of standardization and quality control.

It was on October 14 in 1946, when quality conscious delegates from 25 countries gathered in London at a conference and decided to create an international organization focused on facilitating standardization. It was decided to observe WSD and formation of International Standards Organisation (ISO). Consequently, in 1947, ISO was formed, but the first WSD was held in 1970.

The World Standards Cooperation (WSC) held a poster competition on the theme “Less waste, better results – Standards increase efficiency”, which attracted almost 300 entries and over 4000 votes. According to WSC, the winner of the first prize in poster competition is Aildrene Tan (Philippines); and runners up are the teams of Anadi Trikha and Rajesh Kumar (India); Frederica Scott Vollrath; and (Germany) Louis-Emmanuel Pavard (France).

In India, the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) is a national standards body engaged in the preparation and implementation of standards, operation of certification schemes both for products and systems, organisation and management of testing laboratories, creating consumer awareness and maintaining close liason with international standards' bodies, according to the BIS website.

BIS organises activities of standardization, marking and quality certification; provides new thrust to standardization and quality control; implements national strategy for according recognition to standards; and works for the growth and development of industrial production and exports.