ASTM International has launched its Critical and Emerging Technologies (CET) Division, formerly the Advanced Manufacturing Division, scaling the standards model it built in advanced manufacturing to address technologies that are converging fastest. Working primarily in pre-standardization and post-standardization, the division enables faster standards development and brings ASTM’s conformity and credibility to bear.
The division, which is active in approximately 10 ASTM committees and cooperates across roughly 25 countries, assesses critical and emerging technology by where standards are most needed, and accelerates development by defining roadmaps, applying market intelligence, and building training and certification opportunities.
“The launch of this division reflects where ASTM is heading as an organization, from developing standards to delivering standards solutions across the technologies reshaping the global economy,” says ASTM International President, Andy Kireta. “We have proven this model in advanced manufacturing, where our community built a globally adopted framework jointly with international partners, and through Centers of Excellence that embed standards early in the research process. The CET Division scales that approach in partnership with industry, government, academia, and standards bodies around the world.”
Convergent technologies are those that lie at the forefront of innovation, but advance interdependently, rather than in isolation. For example, artificial intelligence is embedded in robotics and manufacturing systems; semiconductors and energy infrastructure underpin them all. More than forty national governments now publish their own lists of critical and emerging technologies, and those lists diverge and shift. Rather than track those labels, ASTM engages CETs at the intersections where these technologies actually meet, thereby creating the opportunity to develop standards alongside technologies rather than after they propagate across society.
“A technology is industrialized and at scale when the quality holds, the results repeat, and it performs the same way globally,” says Mohsen Seifi, Ph.D., Vice President of the Critical and Emerging Technologies Division at ASTM International. “That is the bar. We reach it faster by engaging early, shaping standards while the technology is still taking form, and carrying the work through to training and certification with partners across industry, government, and academia worldwide.”
The newly launched division maintains advanced manufacturing standardization as its flagship, incorporating cutting-edge topics across ASTM sectors at various levels of maturity, including:
- Robotics, exoskeletons, and commercial space, with dedicated committees and a growing body of standards
- Drones and unmanned systems, supported by a long-established committee and a mature body of standards
- Emerging technologies like semiconductors, quantum, and biotechnology, still the subject of pre-standardization through ASCET, the division’s center of excellence that operates the U.S. National Center of Excellence for CET Standardization under a cooperative agreement with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
- Artificial intelligence, a rapidly growing focus area for ASCET and for F50, ASTM’s newest committee on artificial intelligence in manufacturing systems, which drew more than 100 organizations from more than 20 countries in its first months
The work of the division will continue to be international and highly collaborative. Drawing upon the expertise of ASTM’s global operations, centers of excellence, and long-standing partnerships with other global standards organizations, the division will align global efforts to standardize rapidly converging technologies. That collaborative model has a track record: what began as a handful of standards in advanced manufacturing became one of ASTM’s most active bodies of work, much of it developed jointly with international counterparts as a single global framework.
The work continues on a set calendar: ASTM’s International Conference on Additive Manufacturing (ICAM) convenes in September, and F50 holds an artificial intelligence workshop during ASTM’s October committee week.
Learn more about the Critical and Emerging Technologies Division here.
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