Safexpert NormManager

Digital standardisation of the future

Machine-readable | Structured | Informed in real time

Traditional standards management

Do you already have a standards management system? Then it probably works according to these traditional principles:

Standards organisations (1) develop standards (2) and make them available in PDF, HTML or XML format in an Internet database (3).

Standards organisations usually focus on "standards users" (4) as their target group. Using software tools (5), standards users search for suitable standards and access the licensed full texts.

Specially developed monitoring functions inform standards users daily about changes to standards in the personal favourites they have set. Sometimes redlining functions make it easier to compare standards when documents have changed.

Sounds good - doesn't it? But is that really what you need as the responsible subject matter expert in practice?

Our new concept

Our new concept is also based on the standards documents (2) published by standards organisations (1). And also in our concept you get access to the full texts via our internet standards database (3):

The most important difference: The target group of our developments are not "standards users". The reason for this is obvious: this profession or role does not actually exist in your company. Of course, as designers, planners, inspectors, buyers or sellers, etc., you can also be "standards users". However, according to your responsibilities, you need completely different digital and machine-readable data extracts from standards.

According to our new concept, these are provided on the Safexpert Live Server (3) in the form of Safexpert additional products and are continuously updated. These additional products are prepared by yourself or by selected SECOM experts so that they can be read and processed by the software systems (6) you require.

Challenges in traditional standards management

Knowledge of standards alone is often not enough! Standardisation often cannot keep pace with the state of the art. However, your product must comply with the state of the art at the time it is placed on the market so that it fulfils the legal product requirements and you reduce the product liability risk for yourself and your company.

In practice, it is completely impossible to manually check on a daily basis which files, projects or systems are affected by "important events" related to published standards and for which employees this information is relevant.

Even the movement of goods within the EEA is made more difficult if, for example, a German-speaking designer has to manually check whether the German edition of his purchased standard used by him fully corresponds to, for example, the French edition. As a rule, he is often unable to do this due to the language barrier alone!

It becomes even more difficult for you as an expert if you need to clarify whether a section in your German standard applies in France at all. To do this, you would have to continuously follow the publications in the EU Official Journal and put them in relation to the sections of the standard.

If you are developing products for the international market, the problem increases. It is sometimes very difficult for you to find out which standard in the USA, Australia, China or other economic regions is the equivalent of your German version. But even if you have overcome this hurdle, you will still have to compare the documents with each other and check your solutions in the projects on the basis of the differences and, if necessary, adapt them to the specific country. Unfortunately, if you have done this work at great expense, you cannot be sure that the results will still fit when you put your products on the market!

These are just a few scenarios that show that traditional standards management with the currently available software tools does not meet the requirements and technical possibilities of the 21st century.

Due to the ever-increasing shortage of skilled workers and the ever-increasing quality requirements, it is urgently necessary to shift time-consuming manual activities to the digital world and to automate labour-intensive work steps!

Our solutions

In order to be able to do your work computer-aided according to the state of the art, you need:

  • extracts from standards or other regulations in machine-readable form, prepared for specific technical groups, and
  • subject-specific software tools that support you with digital analyses and appropriate functions to get your work done.

With Safexpert, we offer you the optimal technical infrastructure for the subject group-specific development of additional products and the matching software modules.

However, you certainly also use other software systems such as CAD or ERP systems or the classic office tools for your work. In addition to our plug-ins for Word, PowerPoint and Excel and the associated NormAnalyzer, we also offer manufacturers of other software systems access to the data of the Safexpert additional products as WEB services. In this way, we enable your software manufacturers to also equip these systems with digital analyses that support you in avoiding errors when standards change or new findings on applied standard sections are available!

    Safexpert modules and functions

    Safexpert NormManager

    The Safexpert NormManager is not just a software tool for researching standards. These and many other reasons speak for the use of Safexpert NormManager:

    • In addition to the traditional functions for searching and managing standards, guidelines and other documents, Safexpert also allows you to manage your own documents, such as works standards, if required.
    • Specially compiled data packages make it easier for you to pre-select the standards you need.
    • In cooperation with our long-standing partner Austrian Standards, you can access the full texts of European standards in German or English.
    • In your personal dashboard, you will learn about "important events" by means of integrated digital analyses.
    • With the Safexpert Knowledge Base and the specially developed "Safexpert PDF Viewer", the Safexpert NormManager contains a completely new type of IT infrastructure with which we provide daily updated additional knowledge directly during the study of a document in a target group-oriented manner and in real time.
    • The "Document comparison" function, in conjunction with the additional products of the "Document structure" type specially prepared for this purpose, provides you with a new type of tool that manages the status information of standards at section level. This method offers completely new possibilities for digital analyses.

    Safexpert NormAnalyzer

    • With this plug-in for Word, PowerPoint and Excel, you can insert source references to standards sections anywhere in files of these types using the Safexpert NormManager.
    • With the Safexpert NormAnalyzer you can find out at the touch of a button which files in the directories you have specified are affected by changes to standards.

    Other Safexpert Modules

    WEB services for other software systems

    • You are a developer of a software system and would like to use the data from Safexpert additional products, which are extracted from standards and continuously updated, also in your system for digital analyses or other functions? Then please contact us. We will be happy to inform you about our WEB services and the possible implementation in your systems!
    • Are you a user of a software system and would like to have functions that facilitate interaction with standards in this system as well? We would be happy to clarify with the manufacturer of your software system in a special customer project how and under which conditions functions for special use cases can be implemented in the system.

    Important events / digital analyses

    • Conventional standards management systems usually inform about changes to standards in specific subject areas (ICS circles). But hand on heart: do you have the time to check every day what impact the changes have on your projects or files? Just finding out what has changed in a standard is time-consuming and annoying.
    • But what's more: there are numerous events related to standards that may be important for you, even though the standard has not (yet) changed at all! With the Safexpert Knowledge Base we now offer a completely new system to manage up-to-date technical and experience knowledge according to the state of the art and to make it available to users in real time in tested quality.

    How digital standardisation works with Safexpert

    The Safexpert Live Server - the basis of digital standards knowledge

    The basis for ballast-free and project-oriented work with standards is the new IBF Live Server (2). Here you will find:

    Software systems

    You do your work with confidence using several different software systems (1).

    The Safexpert modules Risk Assessment, CE Marking and CheckManager have a wide range of functions with which you can insert source information on standard sections into your projects. As a product developer(3), you will learn via your personal dashboard when important events have occurred that affect these standard sections.

    We offer the "Safexpert NormAnalyzer plug-ins" for the Microsoft Office programmes Word, PowerPoint and Excel. Using these plug-ins, you can insert source information on standards sections into your files at the relevant points in conjunction with Safexpert NormManager and the appropriate data packages. At the click of a mouse, Safexpert NormAnalyzer analyses which files in the directories you have selected are affected by changes to the respective sections.

    We offer manufacturers of other software systems (CAD, ERP systems,...) access to data of the Safexpert additional products in the form of WEB services. In this way, manufacturers of such systems can also implement digital update and relevance analyses in their software solutions.

    Report knowledge - give feedback

    As a technical expert, you have the opportunity to report knowledge about standards quickly and unbureaucratically (4), for example if you notice an error in a standard or if you think that a requirement no longer corresponds to the state of the art. Our editorial team will take care of further qualitative processing.

    Who develops and updates Safexpert additional products?

    It is impossible for IBF and other companies to develop suitable additional products for all possible standards available in the world and to react to important events on a daily basis. In our new concept, experts from IBF and selected members of our Standards Experts Community (SECOM) work together in four different roles to form the editorial team(5).

    • IBF Data Management
    • SECOM Experts
    • SECOM Editorial Manager
    • IBF Community Management

    The monthly updated standards data is provided by our long-term partner Austrian Standards (6). The IBF data management staff refine the data with the publications in the EU Official Journal (7) and update the statuses on the Safexpert Live Server.

    If you develop works standards (8), Safexpert now provides you with a software infrastructure with which you can also digitally prepare your own standards content in such a way that your suppliers learn of changes promptly and automatically and can react to them in the ongoing projects at lightning speed.

    Safexpert 9.0: Digital standards management of the future

    You can find more detailed information on our concept of digital standards management of the future in our white paper.

    See for yourself!

    Demo Version


    With the free demo version you can test Safexpert for 60 days without obligation.
     

    WEB Presentation


    In the WEB presentation "Digital standardisation with Safexpert" you will get an overview of how Safexpert will revolutionise standardisation and how you as a user will benefit from it.

    Personal Consulting


    We would be happy to make an appointment for a personal consultation with you. You will learn how we can support you with our software products and services.

    Other products

    Seminars on CE marking

    Seminars and Consulting on CE-Marking and Risk Assessment

    Safexpert user training

    Take full advantage of the system right from the start.

    Certified Safexpert trainers

    With the certification program Certified Safexpert Professional (CSP) CE consultants can pass on their knowledge to their customers.