ASTM stands for American Society for Testing and Materials. It is usually called American Society for Testing and Materials International. This helps to develop and publish the standards of the wide range of materials and products. It also determines the standards of systems and services. The standards from ASTM operate globally. It is established in the year 1898 and is predated to be the oldest one when compared to all the standards like ANSI, ISO, DIN, IEC and more.
ASTM was founded due to cause. In those days, railways are being popular. But there are many rail breaks in this fast growing railway industry. This has been started to analyse and give the standards of the railway rails. This helped to develop a standard of the steel used for the fabrication of rails. First the name used to be American Society for Testing Materials. It has been changed to American Society for Testing and Materials.
There is also a membership opportunity and is open to anyone, i.e., anyone is free to join in the organization. Though standards are developed in the organization with the committees, you can join in the organization. New committees are also formed in the interest of the members. Members can be divided into producers, customers, consumers and the rest-“General Interest”. We need to maintain the proportion in such a way that 50 percent of every committee or subcommittee does not exceed the producers. In the year 2015, ASTM has around 30,000 members involving around 1,150 organization members from many countries all round the world. There are many awards like International Award of Merit and more. International Award of Merit is the organizations highest award and ASTM international will be classified by United States Internal Revenue Service.
ASTM was once called only American International, as one out of five people from the committee or group lives out side the country. We have many members in the ASTM from other countries like around 120 countries.
The main aim of ASTM is to do and follow these objectives mentioned below –
A Promote the public health and safety including the overall quality of life.
B Promote the overall environment and help reduce pollution.
C Contribute as much as it can for the reliability of materials.
D Strive hard for the exceptional performance of products and systems.
E To provide ever and long lasting services to the consumers and customers.
F To facilitate international, national and regional commerce.
ASTM originally stands for quality and technical excellence in the materials and techniques. It supports all the tenets of fairness, inclusiveness and participation of all the stakeholders. The stake holders include many categories like, consumers, customers, developers, owner, sponsor or investor and many more. In other words a stakeholder is one, who have even an interest or small amount of share in the company or organization. The ASTM committee represent the collective techniques for technical experts, manufacturers, users, public interests, quality assurance professionals. The ASTM standards are adopted and will be used for top quality manufacturers.
