Standards Development
CSA exists to develop standards. Among the fifty-seven different areas of specialization are climate change, business management and safety and performance standards, including those for electrical and electronic equipment, industrial equipment, boilers and pressure vessels, compressed gas handling appliances, environmental protection, and construction materials.
Most standards are voluntary, meaning there are no laws requiring their application. Despite that, adherence to standards is beneficial to companies because it shows products have been independently tested to meet certain standards. The CSA mark is a registered certification mark, and can only be applied by someone who is licensed or otherwise authorised to do so by the CSA.
CSA developed the CAN/CSA Z299 series of quality assurance standards, which are still in use today. They are an alternative to the ISO 9000 series of quality standards.
Laws and regulations in most municipalities, provinces and states in North America require certain products to be tested to a specific standard or group of standards by a Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratory (NRTL). Currently forty percent of all the standards issued by CSA are referenced in Canadian legislation. CSA's sister company CSA International is an NRTL which manufacturers can choose, usually because the law of the jurisdiction requires it, or the customer specifies it.
Read more about this topic: Canadian Standards Association
Famous quotes containing the words standards and/or development:
“Measured by any standard known to science—by horse-power, calories, volts, mass in any shape,—the tension and vibration and volume and so-called progression of society were full a thousand times greater in 1900 than in 1800;Mthe force had doubled ten times over, and the speed, when measured by electrical standards as in telegraphy, approached infinity, and had annihilated both space and time. No law of material movement applied to it.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“To be sure, we have inherited abilities, but our development we owe to thousands of influences coming from the world around us from which we appropriate what we can and what is suitable to us.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)