INDUSTRIAL CONFORMITY

It Can Help Bring More World Trade

AS THE father of mass production, U.S. business pioneered in standardizing thousands of parts and products to spur sales and cut costs. It set up specifications, for example, so that a light bulb would fit the socket no matter who made it. But while showing the world the benefits of standardization, U.S. firms have done a poor job in helping set up worldwide standards. They have left the field largely to other nations, simply because many U.S. businessmen are unaware of the importance such standards play in world trade. This importance was emphasized last week as 1,000 delegates from 40 countries met at Harrogate, England, to bring the world closer to conformity on everything from screw threads to nuclear reactors. Eventually, their decisions will have repercussions from the board rooms of Krupp to the Kremlin, affect housewives from Minneapolis to Vladivostok.

The need for international standards was recognized 50 years ago but did not attract worldwide attention until World War II. In 1947, shortly after the International Organization of Standardization was formed, doctors discovered that an order of Swedish hypodermic needles rushed to epidemic-stricken Egypt did not fit U.S. syringes in use there. Needles to fit eventually arrived--but not until hundreds of victims had died of cholera. Since then, the organization, working through scores of national standards groups, has approved 58 worldwide standards for everything from musical pitch to the abrasion resistance of rubber.

U.S. firms have often taken notice of international standards only when they were being hurt. The U.S. movie industry fought for and got an international film standard based on U.S. standards (with the sound track on the left edge of the film as it goes through a projector) only after the Germans ate into its foreign markets and threatened to establish German standards with the sound track on the other side. Result: U.S. movie companies can distribute worldwide, get 50% of their income from abroad.

Though U.S. firms, in a belated awakening, sent 60 delegates to Harrogate, they have taken the lead in developing only nine world standards. They have not worked at all on 58 of the 142 draft recommendations for standards now being considered, including standards for such big export items as steel and textile machinery. Many standards may therefore be set up contrary to U.S. design, shutting U.S. goods out of nations that adopt them as effectively as do high tariffs, currency restrictions or import quotas.

Since U.S. industrial technology leads the world, many nations could easily be persuaded to adopt U.S. standards as international, thus open up new markets for U.S. products. But while U.S. businessmen have dallied, the world has not waited. Great Britain, France and The Netherlands have taken the lead in standard setting, and even Russia has participated in one-third more standardization conferences than the U.S. Young industrial nations are already finding it easier to adopt British. French or even Russian rather than U.S. standards. In the last ten years, India has adopted some 1,000 national standards; most were British, only a few American.

U.S. industry has not even taken the trouble--or spent the money--to have its 1,700 national standards translated for use in foreign countries. In Latin America, where the U.S. is the biggest trader, few standards exist. But it is European businessmen instead of U.S. firms who are translating their standards into Spanish and Portuguese in a drive to grab a bigger slice of its growing market.

U.S. firms have already been hurt by not taking part in fixing worldwide standards. They ignored international proposals to govern the size of grooved pulleys and V-belts, later found that the standards adopted were detrimental to U.S. products. Now the U.S., through its American Standards Association, is vainly trying to have the recommendation changed. American businessmen did not participate in discussions for uniform cast-iron pipe specifications, stood back while standards were approved that do not mesh with those in the U.S. Result: U.S. industry has lost business, especially in South America. A major U.S. pipe company recently could not fill an order to Venezuela, for example, because of the difference in specifications.

Most U.S. companies, geared to big production, cannot profitably change their products to meet foreign standards for export orders. But smaller foreign companies often find it worthwhile to change their products to conform to U.S. standards so that they can go after the big U.S. market. Said H. Thomas Hallowell Jr., president of the American Standards Association: "It is no coincidence that American industries doing the largest export business--the electrical and motion-picture industries, for example--are the ones that have helped develop international standards."

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