DIN and DKE have made great progress in developing digital standards. The joint IDiS (Digital Standards Initiative) network group has now described eleven cases that provide good examples of how to apply standards. The aim here is to identify the requirements that digital standards need to meet. The IDiS experts will be presenting their results in a new white paper at the Hannover Messe.

Encouragingly, the idea of a national stakeholder group for SMART standards (IDiS) has also met with great international approval. For example, the International Organization for Standardization ISO and its counterpart for electrical engineering IEC are now paying increased attention to SMART standards. “We have gathered application cases from across Germany, and our European and international partners have followed suit. IDiS demonstrates how to make coordinated collaboration between standardization organizations and standard users a success. After all, we need a common understanding of SMART standards,” says Christoph Winterhalter, Chairman of the Executive Board at DIN.

Machines should be able to read standards automatically

Today, standards are available only in document form – be it on paper, as a PDF file or in online viewers (HTML). While the industrial sector is becoming increasingly automated, these documents must still largely be imported and checked by people. In a digital world, norms and standards also need to be made available in digital form so that they can be read and applied automatically by machines or other systems (such as CAD). This will mean a clear time advantage with significant savings and improved quality for the industry. 

This time the focus is on users

After first examining how the content of standards needs to be prepared to directly support automatic processing and use in the future, IDiS is now focusing on the users of standards in its second white paper. More than 100 user experiences from around the world have been compiled, documented and evaluated to create eleven fundamental application cases. “The new white paper can now help the various groups to record their goals, needs and tasks in a more effective and coordinated way. The future of standards is digital application. Just think, for example, of the All Electric Society, where various sectors need to be digitally interconnected. SMART standards can make it possible to achieve this networking not only based on normative rules but also with digital support,” says Michael Teigeler, Managing Director of DKE.

A plan is now being drawn up to define exactly what needs to happen next. Teigeler and Winterhalter are both convinced that the entire SMART standards system will be enhanced and fleshed out year after year. New requirements will be added, resulting from progressive digitalization and new application scenarios.