Foreword

ISO (the International Organization for Standardization) is a worldwide federation of national standards bodies (ISO member bodies). The work of preparing International Standards is normally carried out through ISO technical committees. Each member body interested in a subject for which a technical committee has been established has the right to be represented on that committee. International organizations, governmental and non-governmental, in liaison with ISO, also take part in the work. ISO collaborates closely with the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) on all matters of electrotechnical standardization.

International Standards are drafted in accordance with the rules given in the ISO/IEC Directives, Part 2.

The main task of technical committees is to prepare International Standards. Draft International Standards adopted by the technical committees are circulated to the member bodies for voting. Publication as an International Standard requires approval by at least 75 % of the member bodies casting a vote.

In other circumstances, particularly when there is an urgent market requirement for such documents, a technical committee may decide to publish other types of normative document:

• an ISO Publicly Available Specification (ISO/PAS) represents an agreement between technical experts in an ISO working group and is accepted for publication if it is approved by more than 50 % of the members of the parent committee casting a vote;
• an ISO Technical Specification (ISO/TS) represents an agreement between the members of a technical committee and is accepted for publication if it is approved by 2/3 of the members of the committee casting a vote.

An ISO/PAS or ISO/TS is reviewed after three years in order to decide whether it will be confirmed for a further three years, revised to become an International Standard, or withdrawn. If the ISO/PAS or ISO/TS is confirmed, it is reviewed again after a further three years, at which time it must either be transformed into an International Standard or be withdrawn.

Attention is drawn to the possibility that some of the elements of this document may be the subject of patent rights. ISO shall not be held responsible for identifying any or all such patent rights.

ISO/TS 10303-1207 was prepared by Technical Committee ISO/TC 184, Industrial automation systems and integration, Subcommittee SC4, Industrial data.

ISO 10303 is organized as a series of parts, each published separately. The structure of ISO 10303 is described in ISO 10303-1. ¹⁾ .

Each part of ISO 10303 is a member of one of the following series: description methods, implementation methods, conformance testing methodology and framework, integrated generic resources, integrated application resources, application protocols, abstract test suites, application interpreted constructs and application modules. This part is a member of the application modules series.

A complete list of parts of ISO 10303 is available from the Internet:

http://www.tc184-sc4.org/titles/STEP_Titles.htm.

¹⁾A future edition of ISO 10303-1 will describe the application modules series.

© ISO 2005 — All rights reserved