Industry standards serve to define uniform standards and processes for products as well as services and technologies in a wide range of sectors. The development and observance of standards offers several advantages: quality assurance, interoperability/interchangeability, safety, cost efficiency and trade facilitation.

It is thus hardly surprising that the introduction of standards systems and standards in the rolling bearing sector has revolutionised the trade. In the early 20th century, roller bearing manufacturers began to develop their own production standards for the first time in order to enable compatibility and interchangeability in their customers’ applications. This allowed them to sell their products at an international level, expand into new, global markets and work in a more time-and cost-efficient way. For the customers this led to a massive increase in the variety and availability of the products.Above all, however, the standardisation of rolling bearings resulted in a new definition of quality standards. Characteristics such as dimensions, materials, tolerances as well as special test methods were uniformly specified. The end user thus had the certainty that his bearings correspond to uniform quality requirements irrespective of the manufacturer or the country of manufacture. Over the course of the years a number of large nations and economic powers have defined their own industry standards, which have also established themselves internationally and in some instances form equivalents to other standards systems. These are described in more detail below.

ASTM

The United States of America already recognised the significant advantages of standardising machine elements very early on. With the umbrella organisation ANSI (American National Standards Institute), the first national organization for standardisation was founded in 1918 in order to support the growing industrial sector in the USA. Before this, there were already smaller association of this kind, for example the “American Society for Testing and Materials” (short: ASTM), which has been drafting technical standards and specifications up to the present today. Since 2001 this has been called “ASTM International” in order to emphasise its international orientation. These ASTM standards are used, for example, in mechanical engineering, for construction materials, plastics, medical devices, test methods and even for the definition of environmental standards.

ABMA

During the First World War a number of American institutions teamed up in order to guarantee the production of rolling bearings for military applications. This marked the beginning of the ABMA (American Bearing Manufacturers Association). This has occupied itself up to the present day with the standardisation of rolling bearings and defines characteristics such as dimensions, materials and tolerances. In addition, it represents the interests of the roller bearing manufacturers vis-à-vis government agencies and provides support during the establishment of favourable terms and conditions.
Did you know? In the ABMA standard the tolerance classes are listed in ascending order, whereas in the DIN and JIS standards they are listed in descending order. For example: JIS class 6 ≙ DIN P6 ≙ ANSI/ABMA ABEC 3.

ISO

ISO standards are international standards that are valid worldwide, whereas other standards systems are generally only in use at a national level. ISO standards are used in a wide range of industrial sectors. They were developed for the first time shortly after the Second World War. ISO stands for “International Organization for Standardization”. To ensure that the abbreviation was the same in all languages, I-S-O was chosen. This originates from the Greek term isos and means “the same”. The independent organisation is made up of a large number of national standards bodies from around the world and is headquartered in the Swiss city of Geneva.

DIN

DIN (“Deutsches Institut für Normung”) stands for German Institute of Standardisation, and as the name already implies, it is the German standard. A well-known example of DIN-standardised products can be found in the field of paper production: Everyone is familiar with the classic paper size DIN A4 used in printers, spiral-bound notepads and envelopes. DIN standards are also very widely used by German roller bearing manufacturers.

JIS

Since the 1920s standardisation in the rolling bearing industry has been growing steadily. Japan, for example, has developed its own standards system, and products are certified there according to JIS standards. JIS stands for “Japanese Industrial Standards”. This standards system is used in many industrial sectors such as the automobile industry, the electronics industry, the chemical sector and the construction industry and is still mainly used in Japan itself. These standards are also of interest from an international point of view, especially for products destined for export, as it guarantees the manufacturing quality according to Japanese standards.