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TC 56 — IEC Dependability
Standards — FAQs
What is Dependability?
What is the IEC?
What is TC 56?
How are Dependability Standards developed?
What Dependability Standards are available and
how are they obtained?
Why is membership in the US TAG important?
How does one join the US TAG to TC 56?
To whom may further questions be directed?
Dependability is defined by the IEC (International
Electrotechnical Commission) as:
The collective term used to describe the
availability performance and its influencing factors: reliability
performance, maintainability performance and maintainability
support performance.
Note. – Dependability is used only for
general descriptions in non-quantitative terms.
This is definition 191-02-03 in the document
“IEC 60050-191 International Electrotechnical Vocabulary.
Chapter 191: Dependability and quality of service”.
Essentially this definition encompasses Reliability, Maintainability
and Serviceability, the RMS “-ilities”, which, in
the U.S. are commonly covered separately.
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The IEC is the world’s oldest international
standards organization having been established in 1906. It
is the international standardization agency for the fields
of electricity, electronics and related technologies. By agreement
with ISO, the other major international standards organization,
IEC has responsibility for developing Dependability standards
while ISO, has responsibility for Quality related standards.
Both organizations cooperate closely; in fact they are headquartered
in the same building in Geneva, Switzerland. Over 100 countries
are members of the IEC. Each country participates through
its National Committee. The American National Standards Institute
(ANSI) represents the US NC.
It is important to understand that voting rules
have been established and each country participating has one
vote.
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TC 56 is the IEC Technical Committee (TC) charged
with developing and maintaining Dependability standards and
related documents. The US is one of 23 countries engaged in
TC 56 work. TC 56 has a Chairman, appointed by the IEC, and
a Secretariat to perform the administrative tasks. The British
Standards Institute is the present Secretariat for TC 56.
All input to the TC 56 Secretariat is through the US National
Committee (NC), which is represented by ANSI.
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How are Dependability Standards
developed?
Each country participates in TC 56 through a
Technical Advisory Group (TAG), which is chaired by a Technical
Advisor (TA). The US TAG is supported by the ASQ who acts
as Administrator. The TAG is expected to participate by recruiting
experts, taking part in document development and review and
by attending TC 56 and TAG meetings in the US and internationally.
Although there is now almost total reliance on the Internet
for dissemination of documents and collection of commentary
there is still a need to participate in project meetings,
which frequently are overseas.
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What Dependability Standards
are available and how are they obtained?
Over 30 Dependability Standards and Application
guides have been published by the IEC. They are organized
in four levels.
- The top level (-1) documents deal with Dependability
Management
- The second level (-2) provide guidance on program elements
and tasks
- The third level (-3) consists of series of application
guides to aid the user
- The fourth level is a series of stand-alone tools, which
define some procedure or statistical technique.
All the documents are listed on the IEC Web
site (www.iec.ch) under Technical Committee 56. A brief description
of each document is available by selecting the Document title,
which is in HTML. It is also possible to learn about TC 56
Work in progress and the membership of the Working Groups
and Project Groups. Instructions for ordering copies of the
standards are shown. TC 56 documents are also available through
the American National Standards Institute (www.ansi.org).
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Why is membership in the
US TAG important?
A particular value of IEC Dependability Standards
is their global acceptance. When it is necessary for an enterprise
to deal with matters related to Reliability, Maintainability
or Service Support in matters of international commerce it
is logical to refer to these documents. However if US commercial
interests do not actively involve their employees and representatives
in the creation of these documents they may regret the eventual
outcome. It is no secret that European Union companies are
much more involved in IEC work than US companies.
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How does one join the US
TAG to TC 56?
Membership in the US TAG is open to all national
interested parties who indicate that they are directly and
materially affected by the activity of the TAG. A national
interested party is any individual located in the US, representing
an organization, company, government agency or themselves,
including US branch offices of foreign companies. Membership
is not free; an annual fee of $250 is imposed by the USNC
for each party participating. Application forms are available
via the US Standards Group on QEDS website: http://standardsgroup.asq.org.
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To whom may further questions
be directed?
Further questions or inquiries can be directed
to the US TAG TA whose name and address is shown below.
John A. Miller
6202 Sonoma Dr.
Huntington Beach, CA 92647
(714) 842-4776
millerja@earthlink.net
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