From widgets to world trade

摘要

For many business managers, government officials and the public at large, "standardization" is still the concern of engineers, not theirs. For them, standards are primarily about necessary, but boring things like the dimensions of "widgets ". Interestingly, it's not an engineer, but a poet who reminds us that in one case, for the want of the right widget, the ship was lost, and that in another, the king's horse lost a shoe at a crucial moment and as a result, the king lost his kingdom. In other words, the humble widget can be hugely important and therefore it is not surprising that so many ISO standards are devoted to resolving technical and engineering issues. In this way, they keep the wheels of industry turning smoothly.