Hello SC 4,

As 2021 winds down, I wanted to take a brief moment of your time and reflect on the year.  I begin with a huge Thank You to every one of you that contributed to SC 4's accomplishments this year.  As we started the year, we were optimistic that a pandemic would soon subside and we would be enjoying each other's company at the next in person Plenary meeting.  Alas, this was not the case and the challenges of in person meetings persisted throughout the year.  However, we did not let that stop us from getting the important work of standardization done.
 
We held our spring and fall plenaries virtually and built upon the foundations laid in 2020 around virtual projects, working groups and cross team integration.  We completed important, industry driven projects with the release of ISO 23247 parts 1 through 4, updates to the STEP development methods utilizing SysML with ISO 10303 parts 15 through 18, visualization solutions through ISO/TR 24463 and ISO/TS 23301, updates to the STEP standard with ISO 10303-59 and the release of ISO 10303-243 for the Model Based Systems Engineering domain.  Not to be outdone, we also saw the release of several parts to ISO 8000 - Data Quality with updates to part 2: Vocabulary and new parts for assessment indicators, profiling data, and master data with parts 2, 66, 81, and 110. 
 
We also launched important work for the future including important updates to ISO 10303-239, ISO 10303-242 and our first Publicly Available Specification for fastener connections in automotive with ISO/PAS 8329.  ISO 8000 will grow upon successful ballot with new parts 114 and 120 that address the domain space of portable data and sensors.  Finally, ISO 15926 will see an update to part 6 for the oil and gas industry.  
 
Looking inward, we invested in ourselves with the development of a Committee Specific Procedure that will allow for the approval of ISO content in the IEC Common Data Dictionary and open the door for managing ISO standards in database format for SC 4 and ISO.  As of this writing, we are migrating our standards development system from Bugzilla and CVS to agile based tools in JIRA and GIT.  This will afford a step function improvement in quality and speed for our resource constrained development teams.  In addition, we continue a strong partnership with ISO through our contributions to the SMART Standards Initiative and participation in the ISO Online Documents Authoring project with ISO 10303-1 and other projects in the near future.
 
2022 promises to be an exciting year with the hope that we will be able to share each other's company in person again and continue our important work in standardization.  I look forward to 2022 and hope that you have the chance to take a break, spend time with loved ones, and above all, stay safe and healthy.
 
Best wishes for you and yours this holiday season!
 
Kenny Swope
Chair, ISO/TC 184/SC 4 - Industrial Data