Institutions and Organisation

Anyone can submit a standardization request to DIN in general or directly to the DIN office of a standard or working committee known to them. This application can already contain a standard proposal. The responsible standards committee decides whether to accept or reject the standardization request.

From the standardization request, the committee – often in a sequence of several standard templates – develops a manuscript for a standard draft. It is then reviewed by DIN’s internal standards inspection body for compliance with the DIN rules in terms of content and editing.

During the following objection period, all interested parties have the opportunity to submit a statement. The comments are forwarded to the responsible standards/working committee and discussed there within three months of the end of the objection period.

The manuscript for the final version of the standard is created taking into account the results of the consultations, then goes through the approval procedure with the standards inspection office and finally is published as a standard by Beuth Verlag.

First, a New Work Item Proposal (NWIP) is created, which is approved by the ISO Technical Management Board (TMB) and then sent to the national organizations of all relevant countries for voting (ballot). If more than half of the countries agree, a Working Group (WG) or a Project Committee (PC) will be set up to which each country can send experts.

The NWIP may already have a Working Draft (WD) attached as a proposal, which is then to be addressed at the first meeting. Otherwise, such a WD must first be created by the newly established committee. Normally, this WD is created through division of labor and discussion under the coordination of a convenor, i.e., an umpire.

The result is the Committee Draft (CD), which is sent to the countries for ballot and comments. In case of a ballot result with more than 75% approval of the votes cast, the comments are incorporated and the result is redistributed as Draft International Standard (DIS) for a new ballot.

The last level is the International Standard (IS). Standards that are not given the full meaning of an IS are published as Technical Reports (TR) or technical rules. Sometimes a TR becomes an IS at a later stage.