Though the majority of standards are company standards, scientific
standardisation literature pays hardly any attention to them. In this
paper we describe results from a research project on company
standardisation (Oly & Slob, 1999). The researchers investigated six
chemical and petrochemical industries in the Netherlands: Akzo Nobel,
Dow Chemical, DSM, Gasunie, NAM and Shell. These companies have
numerous standards for their installations. Best practice for
developing such standards was developed by examining the companies and
using insights from relevant literature. This paper describes the
scientific approach used and some of the best practice results
