Product Design Standards

ASTM Medical Device Standards

ASTM is one of the leading standards developers for medical devices. With 24 categories, addressing everything from surgical implements to automated analysis, ASTM medical device standards cover a truly wide range. With how much research and training goes into the medical industry, standardization plays a key role in productively actualizing that effort. Organized below for your convenience by usage, industry, and theme are over 300 standards.

BSI Child Care and Safety Standards

BSI Child Care and Safety standards cover a range of products to be used by children and by adults caring for children. Published by the British Standards Institution, many of these standards are for products such as carriers, cradles, cots, and other devices designed for holding a child. Other standards address products like cutlery or toys, where the child itself is handling the product. Looking outside of the home, playground equipment and surfacing is a key focus in child safety standards efforts, along with foodstuffs, and personal flotation devices designed for use with children.

Consumer Products Safety Standards

Consumer products safety standards are necessary for the testing and evaluation of a wide variety of consumer products. ASTM International (ASTM) has developed consumer products safety standards for an assortment of products such as playground equipment, swimming pools and spas, baby cribs, soccer goals, chairs, candles, toddler beds, children’s toys, toddler carriers, trampolines, and more. These standards serve as a guideline for manufacturers to use for the assurance of quality and safety.

Ergonomics Standards

Ergonomics standards in the workplace promote worker productivity, safety and health. The standards outline practices for improving accessibility, and visibility. They provide standardized procedures and practices for measuring and reducing physical stress and mental fatigue from motion, vibration, shock, sounds.

Household Appliances

Household appliance standards, developed by multiple standard developing organizations with a particular focus from IEC, look to the safety of appliances that are intended for household or light industrial use and may be handled by consumers, children, or others who may be unskilled. Combining the power involved in many of these appliances and the safety of the user is a complicated issue that feeds strongly into the need for standardization.

Furnaces, Heaters, and Ovens

Furnaces, heaters, and oven design and safety standards are published by a wide variety of SDOs, including, NFPA, ASSE, ASTM, CSA, and many more. They cover products in many applications and industries, from home water and air heaters, furnaces to meld metals, and conventional ovens for food preparation. Not only product attributes are specified; many documents listed here contain valuable information to prevent accidents when working with hazardous combustible tools and materials, such as the NFPA systems hazards code. The most commonly referred-to product here is the has-powered heater, with many specifications depending on the scope and demands of the heater's performance, from home heaters to industrial heaters, and covers all aspects of safety, installation, and construction.

Toys

Toy safety and production standards are published by ASTM, ISO, CSA and AS. The ISO 8124 series covers production specfications for a variety of different types of toy sets, security features, and chemical and physical properties or paints and components. Standards from other SDOs cover topics such as electrically operated toys and their conformity to electrical codes, as well as safety of outdoor toys such as swings and slides that children typically play with.

Pipes

Pipe standards are published by a wide variety of SDOs, including ASME, CSA, AWWA, and others. This list covers topics ranging from physical specifications, requirements to transport different materials, pipe supports and hangers, different construction materials and their limits, and general safety.