European And International Standards Relating To Wire Rope Technology
Authors: Friend R.B.N. 
Published: October 2008

INTRODUCTION

The ever increasing requirement to produce, and comply with, new and revised standards covering industrial products, appears to be gaining momentum from year to year. In Europe this is certainly true (I must emphasis that in this paper I am only making comments and observations as an individual wire rope manufacturer, applicable to U.K. and European/I.S.O. standards) and possibly, as a result of the United Kingdom's relatively recent membership to the E.E.C. (European Economic Community), combined with the decision to metricate the steel wire rope industry in the United Kingdom, this country has been more involved in the last seven or eight years than most. This paper, it is hoped, will highlight standard specifications which affect certain important areas of wire rope manufacture and technology.

STANDARDS WITHIN EUROPE

In Europe, standards are- produced. relative to steel wire rope by C.E.N. (European Committee for Standardization), I.S.O. (International Organization for Standardization), and the national standards of the individual countries, e.g. B.S.I. (British Standards Institution), A.F.N.O.R. (Association Fran9ais Normalization), DIN (Deutsche Normen). Through the machinery of "E.W.R.I.S." (European Wire Rope Information Service), which is representative of the wire rope industry in all the member countries of E.E.C., E.F.T.A. (European Free Trade Agreement) and Spain, agreements are reached, in Committee-e, which ensures a high degree of harmonization between the individual national standards and those produced by I.S.O.

There is a tendency that standards produced by I.S.O. specify the basic requirements for a particular product in relation to the national standards produced by the individual countries which express a more detailed specification with the extra requirements necessary to meet specific requirements which are based on the product demand of the country. It is not reasonable to expect that all countries - remembering I.S.O. has a worldwide association - would reach agreement on numerous detailed points of a specification but they can agree on basic principles and it is these which comprise the majority of International Standards. The manufacturer or the user has the option to comply with either the standard of his own country or, alternatively, with the relevant I.S.O. standard.

According to Article 100 of the Treaty of Rome however, the E.E.C. programme for the removal of technical barriers to trade aims at "the approximation of such provisions laid down by law, regulation or administrative action in member states as directly affect the establishment of functioning of the common market". In order to fulfill these obligations, the E.E.C. institutions have adopted the policy of legislation with reference to standards, where feasible, and have called upon. the European standards body C.E.N. to support community requirements in this respect. Therefore, where a C.E.N. standard exists, it is compulsory that the manufacturer complies with it and, in turn, it is compulsory that each member country of the E.E.C. must include the contents of such a standard within its national standards.