Standards & Specifications: A How-To Guide

This is written with a British slant and gives a very nice history of the development of British standards.

Good overall book covering the basics of standards as well as giving in-depth information from an engineering point-of-view.

A slim volume that is a quick, extremely readable introduction to standards.

Standards play a very important part in the engineering world. They supplement the design process by guiding the designer or user to ensure consistent products with safe and reliable operation.  Understanding and complying with pertinent standards helps to ensure a successful design, fabrication, and operation of a product. This book introduces the concept of standards and their impact and value. There are tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of engineering standards worldwide, covering every imaginable subject related to engineering. Listing them all would be a monumental undertaking and this book, by necessity, covers only a small portion of them. The appendices at the end of this book provide assistance in identifying a few of these engineering standards, who developed and maintains them, and contact information to help the reader obtain further information.

This book has 3 sections: American, European, International. It is aimed at the manufacturing industry and covers primarily quality control standards. It provides a very readable introduction to standards development in each of the 3 sections.