Products used to be manufactured in accordance with technical specifications or standards of individual countries. However, when international transactions increased, differing technical standards started to generate barriers to international trade. The body established to address ways to remove these technical barriers was the ISO.
“ISO” stands for the International Organization for Standardization, and it is based in Geneva, Switzerland. Established as a non-governmental organization in 1947, it is the international organization responsible for promoting standardization in all fields, except electrical and electronic fields and some areas related to agriculture and food safety.

[Objectives]	Development and publication of international standards for facilitating and promoting international trade
[Member countries]	140 countries. For each country, only one body representing standardization in the country is entitled to participate. From Japan, the Japan Industrial Standards Committee (JISC), the body responsible for investigating and deliberating on Japan Industrial Standards (JIS), joined ISO in 1952.
[Structure]	General Assembly; Council consisting of eighteen elected members from different countries

The Structure of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) is shown below.







The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) and the International Electro-technical Commission (IEC):

	issue ISO/IEC guides that describe the requirements that each conformity assessment body operating product certification, personnel certification, management system certification, testing and calibration, or inspection should satisfy and the associated procedures; and
	publish guides that specify the requirements and procedures that “bodies operating judgment and evaluation of the conformity of ‘conformity assessment bodies’ against ISO/IEC Guide, i.e., ‘accreditation body’” should satisfy;
	promote “mutual recognition” of conformity assessment schemes operated by national governments or by regions, and an appropriate use of international standards.

These guides are currently developed by the ISO Committee on Conformity Assessment (ISO/CASCO), one of the policy development committees of ISO. CASCO is composed of representatives from 88 ISO participating bodies (67 signatory countries and 21 observer countries). From Japan, JISC and JAB both send representatives to ISO/CASCO. Thus, it is the conformity assessment bodies/ accreditation bodies that are developing the requirements and procedures that they themselves should satisfy.

Other current activities are:
preparation/publication of new documents for mutual recognition; preparation of new documents for the requirements applicable to personnel certification (scheduled to be published in the third quarter of 2002); revisions of existing documents for accreditation requirements and management system standards and designing/determination of logo marks; activities of peer evaluation among bodies and of self-declaration by organizations; and efforts to integrate and reduce the number of standards, by integrating as far as possible the normative documents (standards) concerning laboratories, products, and conformity assessment bodies, or specific standards such as the ISO 9000 series and the ISO14000 series.