The activity of standardization consists in processing - through voluntary participation, consensuality, and the application of procedures of transparency - technical documents which, although their application is not compulsory, provide reliable reference points for operators and can therefore assume unequivocal validity from a contractual standpoint.

Sometimes the subject of standards is of such vital importance in protecting workers, the general public or the environment that Public Administrations use them as a reference in legislative documents, thereby transforming them into mandatory documents.
In any event, with the gradual diffusion of the use of standards as contractual instruments and the resulting increasingly widespread recognition of their relevance, compliance is becoming almost "imposed" by the market.

The progressive transformation of markets from local to national and from European to international has led to a parallel development of standards from national to supranational, with important recognitions arriving also from the UN and the World Trade Organization.

This has resulted in the broad participation of countries (more than 100) in the activities of ISO and the importance that ISO standards have assumed on world markets, despite the fact that there is no obligation upon ISO member national standardization bodies to implement them.

Unlike ISO, the European world of standardization is closely interrelated with an ever more comprehensive body of EU directives, so that it has been obliged to apply increasingly stringent internal rules: CEN member standardization organizations are actually required to implement the European standards and withdraw their own in the event of conflict.

In this context, national standardization activities are being gradually limited to cover more specifically local situations or areas having low priority in respect of supranational studies, while resources are becoming more focused towards European and international activities.

From the start of the century to the present, instead of being limited to the broadening of geographical horizons, the evolution of standardization has also seen a significant level of conceptual evolution that has allowed standards to embrace ever more extensive meanings.

One of the goals of today's standardization activity is the definition of processes, services, and performance levels, taking action in all stages of the life cycle of a product and in service activities.
Moreover, standardization today also addresses aspects of safety, company organization (UNI EN ISO 9000) and environmental protection (UNI EN ISO 14000), thereby helping to defend people, companies, and the environment.