Spring 2021 Newsletter of ISO/TC 184/SC 4 V26 N01

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A Message from the Chairman

I hope this newsletter reaches you safe and healthy! As I was reflecting on our Newsletter from this time last year, I noted how quickly things can change with ISO's quick conversion to virtual operations and our own rapid adjustment to an all-virtual Plenary. A year later, we continue our virtual operations with new learnings and adjustments that support both our mission and the distributed worldwide team. One learning that we have incorporated into the May Plenary is an integrated schedule for the month of April where all Working Group schedules can be seen at a glance giving us the needed visibility for experts to participate. In addition, we are continuing the practice of scheduling some activities in advance of the Plenary that normally would have been conducted during the week. The Plenary week itself will look and feel very similar to our November meeting where the timeslot from 1200 - 1600 UTC is prioritized to give SC 4 members the needed updates from Working Groups, Ad Hoc Groups, Task Forces, and Liaisons.

We have also been hard at work finalizing key productivity enhancements with the Committee with our Committee Innovations projects. Of the three in execution, two will be giving their final reports to SC 4 and providing their recommendations to ISO. ISO 8000-2 Vocabulary sought to develop an enhancement to how a vocabulary can be managed using the ISO Amendment procedure and release multiple times a year. ISO 15926-4 sought to enhance standards.iso.org with referencing functionality that would give a standard that "one click" access to electronic inserts and its historical versions using web page technology. While not finalizing at this time, it is worth mentioning that ISO 10303 SRL is making great progress in developing a Continuous Integration solution for managing tomorrow’s version of the SMRL in modern tooling, enabling a significant simplification in the development of the standard. Finally, the Committee Specific Procedure for JWG 24's management of ISO standards in a database format using the IEC CDD is progressing following comment review. Finally, we have been contributing technical recommendations in a number of areas relative to Smart Manufacturing, Digital Twins and the Model Based Enterprise. The ISO Smart Manufacturing Coordination Committee, of which SC 4 is a member, was recently in front of the TMB and received a renewal of its charter for an additional two years. In addition to providing a forum for collaboration across approximately 30 ISO TC's and SC's, the SMCC is developing a white paper on the transformative opportunity Smart Manufacturing brings to industry though standardization. Digital Twin continues to be an active topic in several forums. At the parent ISO/TC 184 level, the Digital Twin Ad Hoc Group was converted to an Advisory Group on Digital Twin and will be offering recommendations to SC's regarding terminology and harmonization of concepts. This fits nicely with the work in SC 4 and offers the opportunity to leverage the extensive information model foundation of the SC's work toward vocabularies and ontology based systems. Stay healthy, remain safe and I look forward to seeing you online!

Kenny Swope
Chair, ISO/TC 184/SC 4

A Message from the Committee Manager

I look forward to meeting with you all at the upcoming virtual plenary in May. I trust this will be a very productive event for all WGs holding sessions prior to that week. As always, please let me know if you have any items requiring my attention before, during, or after the meeting.

First, I would like to comment on the success of the migration of the ISO/TC 184/SC 4 documents from eCommittees to the new ISO Documents platform in December of 2020. With the success of the informative training sessions, this transition has been completed smoothly and efficiently. Our public documents folder that contains the SC 4 Standing Documents and our ISO Forums continue to operate from the old platform awaiting functionality to be delivered in the new system. All said, a very smooth transition to the new system with thanks to the ISO staff that made this possible.

From ISO, there has been a change in the Editorial Program Manager role. Mr. Bastien Gavoille joined in February following a rebalancing of workload in the ISO Central Secretariat and replaces Ms. Jessica Navarria. We thank Jessica for all her hard work and contributions to SC 4 and welcome Bastien to the Committee. As many of you have already seen, Bastien hit the ground running and is ensuring that we don’t miss a beat on meeting our time-lines for standards releases.

Also, please visit the new ISO/TC 184/SC 4 website here.

Thank you all for your time and please do not hesitate to contact me if you need anything or have any questions. Stay safe and healthy!

Dana Tripp

Committee Manager, ISO/TC 184/SC 4