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 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.
Safexpert Additional Products
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!
In order to be able to do your work computer-aided according to the state of the art, you need:
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!
The Safexpert NormManager is not just a software tool for researching standards. These and many other reasons speak for the use of Safexpert NormManager:
The basis for ballast-free and project-oriented work with standards is the new IBF Live Server (2). Here you will find:
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.
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.
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).
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.
You can find more detailed information on our concept of digital standards management of the future in our white paper.
To the Whitepaper
With the free demo version you can test Safexpert for 60 days without obligation.
Test Demo Version
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.
Details and registration
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.
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With the certification program Certified Safexpert Professional (CSP) CE consultants can pass on their knowledge to their customers.