Best Practice in Company Standardisation

Abstract

Though the majority of standards are company standards, scientificstandardisation literature pays hardly any attention to them. In thispaper we describe results from a research project on companystandardisation (Oly & Slob, 1999). The researchers investigated sixchemical and petrochemical industries in the Netherlands: Akzo Nobel,Dow Chemical, DSM, Gasunie, NAM and Shell. These companies havenumerous standards for their installations. Best practice fordeveloping such standards was developed by examining the companies andusing insights from relevant literature. This paper describes thescientific approach used and some of the best practice results.

Keywords: standardization, company standardization, standard, process industry, benchmarking

JEL Classification: M, M10, L2, D2