Looking at the needs of Standards end users.
The latest in CCC’s series of in-depth conversations focused on standards, Workflow of the Future: Focus on the User, was held on 9 November. Moderator Jonathan Clark, Independent Consultant and Managing Agent, DOI Foundation, spoke with Phil Ham, Director of Customer Success at Standards Digital and Alton Sanders, Senior Project Engineer at Boeing. While prior events in this series have dealt with issues such as sustainability, copyright and licensing, business models, and future workflows, often through the lens of Standards Development Organizations (SDO’s), this session focused on the needs of the end user relying on standards as part of their workflow.
Ham highlighted how well structured and formatted standards assist in reducing unnecessary delays in development projects which run on timelines and on budgets where confusion leads to costly inefficiencies. Working efficiently and effectively to the same standards is a powerful strategy towards mitigating delays and delivering results on time and as expected.
The principal needs Ham identified for Standards users were:
- Finding relevant Standards content more quickly and easily
- Understanding and using content appropriately, by applying specifications and requirements in a compliant way
- Knowing when/what content has changed, and
- Identifying references to regulations and laws
Sanders cited real-world examples from materials engineering, referring to core materials like metals, composites, plastics, and fluids, as well as applied process materials, such as coatings, lubricants, solvents, and paints. Both core and process materials must be encoded accurately in the standard, and then applied appropriately in the manufacturing process to ensure that results are maximally reliable (and available on-time). Sanders emphasized that current processes for acquiring, transforming, and using standards is complex and time consuming and better market solutions are needed.
Sanders discussed a nascent “digital standards alliance” within the aerospace industry, which would come together to solve the significant challenges of working with content from many sources in multiple different formats with differing enrichment tags, tackling a set of challenges that no SDO can solve alone. Velocity of Content readers should expect to hear more about this alliance in the months to come.
For the full conversation, you can watch the standards session on the CCC website.
This event was supported by the US International Trade Administration
