ISO/IEC Guide 2:2004 標準化と関連する活動—一般的な用語, 語彙 | ページ 2

Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) and IEC (the International Electrotechnical Commission) form the specialized system for worldwide standardization. National bodies that are members of ISO or IEC participate in the development of International Standards through technical committees established by the respective organization to deal with particular fields of technical activity. ISO and IEC technical committees collab­orate in fields of mutual interest. Other international organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO and IEC, also take part in the work

International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISI/IEC Directives, Part 2.

Draft Guides adopted by the responsible Committee or Group are circulated to national bodies for voting. Publication as a Guide requires approval by at least 75 % of the national bodies casting a vote.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. ISO and IEC shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

The first edition of this Guide was published by ISO in 1976. It was prepared by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UN/ECE) in consultation with ISO, primarily to facilitate the work of the UN/ECE aimed at removal of barriers to international trade arising from lack of harmoniz­ation of standards or inadequate international application of standards.

The second, third and fourth editions of ISO Guide 2 added new terms and definitions in more or less isolated groups, within no overall planned framework. Work on a systematically structured revision was authorized by the ISO Council in 1981 as the principal task of a working group within the ISO Committee on standardization principles (ISO/STACO), including IEC and UN/ECE spokesmen and in cooperation with the ISO Committee on con­formity assessment (ISO/CASCO) and the International Laboratory Accreditation Conference (ILAC).

The main reason for this activity was a request from UN/ECE for complete and urgent revision of ISO Guide 2 to take into account a number of specific problems raised by the UN/ECE Government Officials Responsible for Standardization Policies as well as the proposed terminology being prepared in the UN/ECE Working Party on Building. Moreover, ISO was publishing an increasing number of Guides on standardization policies and procedures, several of them in conjunction with IEC. To guard against terminological inconsistencies, a clear understanding of basic concepts needed to be established, and unambiguous general terms and definitions provided.

The resulting fifth edition of Guide 2 was issued, for the first time as a joint ISO/IEC publication, in 1986.

The sixth edition (1991) incorporated amendments in response to specific questions raised by ISO and IEC members, requests from the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) and the UN/ECE, and proposals from ISO/CASCO.

The seventh edition (1996) preserved the structure of its recent predecessors by grouping related concepts under generic clause headings. Thus, Clauses 1 to 11 concerned standardization, proceeding from the more general to more specific aspects. Similarly, the terms and definitions given in the revised Clauses 12 to 17 covered the broad spectrum of conformity assessment. These latter clauses were modified on the recommendations of ISO/CASCO to reflect developments in conformity assessment activities, and were approved by the national bodies of ISO and IEC in 1994. They were not intended to provide a comprehensive classification but included, in particular, concepts related to the following typical sequence:

• a) determination of product, process or service characteristics (Clause 13);
• b) comparison of characteristics with specified requirements, i.e. conformity evaluation (Clause 14);
• c) assurance of conformity, e.g. by supplier's declaration or by certification (Clause 15).

This eighth edition (2004) is identical to the seventh edition except that the terms and definitions on conformity assessment (in Clauses 12 to 17 in the 7th edition) have been deleted and replaced by a normative reference to ISO/IEC 17000, Conformity assessment - Vocabulary and general principles.

Introduction

Whilst ISO and IEC jointly provide the international framework for standardization, covering a wide range of mainly technical matters, the general concept of standardization extends beyond their terms of reference. For ISO and IEC purposes, the definition of standardization (1.1) should accordingly be read in conjunction with the definitions of standard (3.2) and consensus (1.7).

The general terminological principles guiding the revisions of Guide 2 since 1986 have been those established by Technical Committee ISO/TC 37, Terminology and other language resources.

Terms expressing more specific concepts may generally be constructed by a combination of terms representing more general concepts. The latter terms thus form “building blocks”, and the selection of terms and the construction of definitions within this Guide has been based on this approach in cases where equivalent English, French and Russian combined terms contain the same “building blocks”.

In this way, additional terms can be readily constructed within the framework of the Guide. For example, the term safety standard can be defined as a standard (3.2) concerned with freedom from unacceptable risk of harm (definition of safety in 2.5).

Words placed between parentheses “(. . . . .)” within some terms may be omitted if it is unlikely that this will cause confusion.

The definitions included in this Guide are directly equivalent in the English, French and Russian languages. They have been drawn up as concisely as practicable. Where they first occur in other definitions, terms which have themselves been defined in this Guide are printed in bold type.

The notes appended to certain definitions offer clarification, explanation or examples to facilitate understanding of the concepts described. In certain cases, the notes may differ in different languages for linguistic reasons, or additional notes may be given.

In science and technology, the English word “ standard ” is used with two different meanings: as a normative document as defined in 3.2 (in French “ norme ”, in Russian “ стандарт ”) and also as a measurement standard (in French “ étalon ”, in Russian “ эталон ”). This Guide is concerned solely with the first meaning. The second is the province of the International vocabulary of basic and general terms in metrology (VIM ).

Scope

This Guide provides general terms and definitions concerning standardization and related activi­ties. It is intended to contribute fundamentally towards mutual understanding amongst the mem­bers of ISO and IEC and the vari­ous governmental and non-governmental agencies involved in standardization at international, regional and national levels. It is intended also to provide a suitable source for teaching and for refer­ence, briefly covering basic theo­retical and practical principles of standardization, certification and laboratory accreditation.

It is not the aim of this Guide to duplicate definitions of terms ade­quately defined for general pur­poses in other authoritative international vocabularies.

Normative references

The following referenced docu­ments are indispensable for the application of this document. For dated references, only the edition cited applies. For undated refer­ences, the latest edition of the referenced document (including any amendments) applies.