What is ISO?

ISO stands for International Organization for Standardization, is an independent, non-governmental international organization with membership from different national standard bodies. They formed in the year 1947 in London. At that time, there are 25 countries involved as members.

Its members bring together experts to share knowledge and develop voluntary, consensus-based, market-relevant International Standards that support innovation and provide solutions to global challenges. The first ISO standard which is SO/R 1:1951 released in the year 1951 regarding Geometrical Product Specification.

Currently, ISO has 164 members and has been developed more than 23182 standards. The new standard keeps increasing year by year. Out of the 20,000+ international standards, some of them are able to be certified, while some of them are just the guidance for people in the industry.

Those ISO standards that are able to be certified are ISO 9001, ISO 14001, ISO 17021, ISO 17025,  ISO 13485, ISO 22000, ISO 22301, ISO 26000, ISO 27001, ISO 31000, ISO 37001, ISO 45001, ISO 50001, etc. ISO (International Organization for Standardization) does not issue the certification. This certification process is assigned to the certification bodies.

Furthermore, there is some ISO standard that can’t be certified but act as a guideline for us. Those common standards that we always saw in our daily life, like:

ISO 31-11 ISO standard for mathematical signs and symbols ( +, -, x, <, >, =, etc)

ISO 216 ISO standard for paper size (A1, A2, A4, B4 size, etc)

ISO 4217 ISO standard for Currency Code (MYR, SGD, USD, AUD, BTC, LTC, etc)

ISO 3166 Codes and names of countries and their subdivisions (Malaysia – MY, Singapore – SG, United States – US, China – CN, etc)