TL;DR
Standards establish common rules for quality, safety and international trade. For 30 years, ISO/TC 213 has been developing the globally standardised ISO GPS language for the description, tolerancing and inspection of component geometry. Experts from 29 countries are involved in this work – and companies can also play an active role in shaping standardisation through national bodies.
What is the significance of standards?
Standards are procedures, definitions and much more, agreed upon and established by experts, designed, for example, to prevent situations that pose a risk to safety or health, but also to ensure that high-quality products are manufactured. Probably the best-known international standard is ISO 9001 for quality management.
The experts meet in committees dedicated to specific subject areas and discuss the content of the standards, sometimes in great depth. These meetings bring together representatives from various organisations, such as companies, universities and colleges, or professional bodies. Depending on whether the standard is international or national, these representatives come from different countries or from a single country.
The outcome of these important, though sometimes very lengthy, discussions is a set of documents that bring together the latest scientific and technical knowledge, thereby reflecting the best possible state of the art at the time the standard is published. In product liability cases, for example, this state of the art is taken into account in the assessment.
Standards are therefore of great importance not only for people’s health and in everyday life, but also for the manufacture of products. At the same time, they underpin global trade by providing internationally comparable rules and procedures.
There is much more to be said about standards and standardisation, but this article focuses specifically on a standards committee.
The Technical Committee on Geometric Product Specification and Verification – ISO/TC 213
The ISO/TC 213 committee develops standards relating to geometric product specification and verification. For macro- and micro-geometry, symbols and rules are defined for the tolerancing of dimensions, deviations in form and position, and surface finish. User standards, such as ISO 8015, ISO 1101 or ISO 5459, as well as standards relating to the structure and concepts of the ISO GPS system – examples include the multi-part ISO 17450 or ISO 14638 – are reviewed every five years and, where necessary, revised to take account of current developments.
The standards governing measurement procedures, measuring instruments and their evaluation through calibration are also drawn up and further developed by this standards committee in order to enable the assessment of actual components and their geometric deviations. Decision rules and the concept of measurement uncertainty, which are set out in the ISO 14253 series of standards, are also important for comparing the specified tolerances with the measurement results.
30 years of ISO/TC 213
In 1996, the decision was taken to consolidate and further develop existing standards on geometric description and measurement within ISO/TC 213 into an international standardisation system for geometric product specification and verification.
The photograph shows the venue where the organisation was founded, Maison de la Mécanique, 39–41 Rue Louis Blanc, 92400 Courbevoie, near Paris in France, where another meeting of ISO/TC 213 was held in September 2026.
Anyone wishing to participate in the standards committee is welcome to contact the national committee first. Within DIN, the NA 152-03-02 acts as a so-called mirror committee for this purpose. However, an official secondment by the company or organisation is required, as working hours and travel time are not remunerated. For companies in particular, participation can be of great importance in ensuring that their own issues are incorporated into standards without the need to draw up separate company-specific guidelines. This committee then delegates experts to the ISO meetings, which take place twice a year, to represent Germany.
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