Technological advances are allowing companies to expand globally and enter new markets. But growth doesn’t come without complications. Inconsistent products and market saturation are just two barriers that may create speed bumps on your roadmap. How can you achieve your company’s vision and harness opportunities in ways that limit risk? Standardization and certification are a big part of the solution.

Global Expansion

Imagine you’re a customer buying a product or tool part from a manufacturer. If that manufacturer has factory locations in North America, Asia, and Europe, the parts you buy shouldn’t arrive in different sizes, styles, or have different performance measures.

Regardless of where you buy, the product you purchase should be designed, fabricated, manufactured, and tested in a standardized way so you experience consistent quality.

How a product is constructed and to which specifications, what processes are followed, and which tools are used are critical factors. These impact the customer’s experience with your product and the company brand – yours and theirs. Implementing a standard (or likely a set of standards) can help achieve consistency. Certifications like those that ASME issues are a trusted signal to your customers, regulatory authorities, and to the market that your products meet these standards.

Standards aren’t just one person’s ideas of how something should work; they are consensus-based, or industry specific requirements developed by subject matter experts that have been synthesized into internationally recognized, and sometimes mandated, requirements. Standards — including those developed by ASME — help protect public health and safety, drive technical innovation, and fuel the growth of global markets.

Standards continually evolve to meet changing technologies, markets, and solutions. ASME strives to offer world class standards solutions that benefit companies around the world.

Entering New Markets

Why Standardization is Not the Enemy of Innovation

Chris Cantrell, senior managing director, standards and engineering services, at ASME, explains how standards can help companies get ahead, innovate, and access a broader market base.

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To achieve growth, many companies are redefining their customer mix and purposely pursuing additional markets in their corporate strategy. Growth may not come from creating new products from scratch but may come from determining how to apply existing products within your portfolio in different or more efficient ways, or to new and exciting industries. Standardization and certification can help.

Right now, for example, many energy companies are looking to diversify their portfolios by exploring the use of renewables, including hydrogen, solar, and wind, to reduce their carbon footprint and work toward achieving their climate goals.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)’s global roadmap aims to ensure that by 2030, renewable energy capacity is tripled, and annual investments in renewables and energy efficiency are significantly increased. This effort includes phasing out coal power plants in Organisation for Economic Development (OECD) countries by 2030 and globally by 2040 (UNDP).

While many fundamental engineering principles remain the same, the technical requirements of creating, storing, and distributing these new energy sources can be quite different.

A company that has historically been laser-focused on oil and gas can leverage standards to adapt and re-engineer their current processes to revise their portfolio and create solutions for the new market that needs additional energy sources.

Some industries are already innovating:

• Energy companies, gas turbine manufacturers, and gas turbine service companies have partnered in projects that are operating gas turbines for power generation on hydrogen blends as high as 60%. They are using a mixture of natural gas, hydrogen, and “hydrogen-containing gas” as the fuel for their retrofit systems.
• With the aviation industry accounting for more 2% of global emissions in 2021, and this is expected to grow, the scale-up of the sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) industry for jet engines is a global need. The SAF technologies will use clean hydrogen and various recycled or waste hydrocarbons or biomass as feedstock for their process for producing SAF. Airlines, including United for example, are already using a blend of jet fuel and SAF on certain routes.
• In the marine industry, the use of ammonia as a fuel for gas turbine production systems is an active area with ongoing research, pilot projects, and industry collaboration that could allow ammonia to become a viable and sustainable marine fuel alternative, especially when green or blue hydrogen are used as the feedstock for ammonia production. The U.S. Department of Energy has highlighted various technological advancements necessary for integrating ammonia as a fuel in gas turbines (Energy.gov).

Good Timing

Hydrogen is the most abundant, smallest, lightest, and cleanest element available to us that can be used as a fuel, yet it is also one of the most complex energy sources to produce, store, transport, and use. Therefore, standardization in these key areas becomes increasingly important for hydrogen as it is continually evolving. More hydrogen-specific standards will be required for broad commercialization, market viability, and supply chain readiness for the new hydrogen economy to happen.

There are certain moments when the dots connect, the numbers add up, and things just make sense. As many companies pursue their transformation into the future of robust global trade and product recognition and acceptance, standardization and certifications will have a significant impact on their long-term success.

Standardization is that X factor.