The system would be based on a production-oriented economic concept, focus on service industries and industries engaged in the production of advanced technologies, and provide for comparable industry classifications across the North American Free Trade Agreement countries. The ECPC established seven interagency subcommittees representing twenty Federal government agencies to create the new system in consultation with U.S. data users and in cooperation with staff from the statistical agencies of Canada and Mexico. These committees met with their Canadian and Mexican counterparts over a three year period and reached agreement on the structure of individual industries, industry groups, and subsectors. Establishments that use the same or similar processes to produce goods or services are grouped together. The SIC, developed in the 1930s and revised periodically over the past 50 years, was not based on a consistent economic concept.
Some industries are demand based while others are production based.
The SIC had 1,004 industries of which 416 were service related industries. The SIC had ten divisions of which five were service-related. The SIC did not. The SIC was a four-digit system that was not linked in any way to the systems of Canada and Mexico. The sixth digit is reserved for this purpose.