By Greg Saunders
Specifications and standards define the parts, materials and processes used in eighty percent of all traded products in the world. The Department of Defense (DoD) ASSIST Database, an online repository for military specifications, standards, handbooks, and related documents (https://assist.dla.mil), lists more than 110,000 documents including specifications, standards, data item descriptions, handbooks, voluntary standards adoption notices, and other technical requirements published by the US Government. There are around 29,000 active documents in the ASSIST Library; 20,000 of these are documents from Government Preparing Activities, while 9,000 are documents from external standards developing organizations (SDOs)…