Xu Bin joined the Qingdao Haier Technology Co. Ltd in 2006 and has been working on the standardization and international standardization since that time. Dr. Bin Xu is currently the expert for IEC/TC100 and ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC25.

Preface:
Nowadays, standardization is playing a more critical role in marketing, industrial and technical fields. Twenty years ago, standardization was the realm of just a few specialists. Today, companies treat standardization as a technical and commercial element of great importance. At the same time, companies have realized they must play an active role in the standardization field, and they must be ready to accept standards made without their agreement. Therefore, it is also increasingly necessary for engineers and decision makers in enterprises to study the purpose and application of standards and standardization, and to optimize their enterprises' position by doing so.

In this article we provide analyses of the interoperability and openness of standards, using the case study of Haier standardization work on U-home systems and home networks, to discuss the purpose and application of standards for modern enterprises.

1. Standards and standardization

Standards, generally speaking, are guideline documentation which reflect agreements on products, practices, and operations by nationally and internationally recognized trade associations and governmental bodies. They can also be an exact value, a physical entity, or an abstract concept, established and defined by authority, custom, or common consent to serve as a reference, model, or rule in measuring quantities or qualities, establishing practices or procedures, or evaluating results.

The guide ISO/CEI 2: 1996 defines a standard as being a document, established by consensus and approved by a recognizer, which assures, for common and repeated use, directive lines or characteristics for activities and their results, with the purpose of obtaining the optimal order degree within a certain context. Some standards are de facto, meaning informal practices followed out of convenience; others are de jure, meaning formal requirements.

Standardization is the process of agreeing on technical standards. In the context of technologies and industries, standardization is the process of establishing a technical standard, which could be a standard specification, a standard test method, standard definition, standard procedure (or practice). It can also be viewed as a mechanism for optimizing economic use of scarce resources. It is recognized today as being the essential discipline for all economical agents. The goals of standardization can be to aid the independence of single suppliers (commodification), compatibility, interoperability, safety, repeatability, and quality.

2. Interoperability and openness of standards
 
Interoperability is the ability of a system or product to work with other systems or products without special effort on the part of the customer. In the context of standardization it is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together (interoperate). It also refers to rules applied to special objects within a certain range (field). One purpose of standard development is to allow interoperability between users.

There are four layers of interoperability, from interface to communication, objects and finally, implementation. Clear and feasible interfaces are fundamental in standardization because they can allow communication between users of the same standards. Meanwhile, standards are applied to certain objects to allow certain interactions and finally, standards execution procedures can implement interoperability. Interoperability, therefore, means barrier-free communication at every one of these four layers.

Openness is a philosophy used as the basis of how various groups and organizations operate. An open standard is more than just a specification. The principles behind the standard, and the practice of offering and operating the standard, are what make the standard open.

Openness allows the option of having various applications on a common platform (standard). In an open standardization system, various entities for a standard are allowed; contents of communicated information can be freely chosen; new applications and standards can be easily extended; and the execution or implementation cost is clear and predictable. These four elements– entity, information, extension, and cost– define whether the system is open or not.

For industries, the development and implementation of a standard must be open. Openness is determined by the interoperability of a standard. Active participation of developers and writers in the standards’ development and implementation is a guarantee of a successful standard.

In the standard making process, the participants are the benefit-relevant parties and must be active in the developing and writing. To guarantee openness, there must be several options or alternatives for the standards, and they must have the same criteria for all users. The decision-making process is the embodiment of the interests of the relevant parties, and the implementation of the standards must be through deep understanding and accurate performance measurement. In this process, relative openness reflects interests of certain groups.

3. Practical application of interoperability and openness
Practically, there cannot be absolute interoperability and openness for any system. Completely open standards do not exist because the same groups continue to make standards.

A standard is always developed and implemented within a certain range, and there can only be interoperability and openness to some extent. From this perspective, we can see that standards are the results of the compromised interests within a certain field, like technologies.

The compromise is caused by different expectations related to different interests. Thus, the creation and implementation of standards for enterprises pursues openness in the smallest scope, while the application of standards pursues the greatest openness and optimized interoperability for users.

Therefore, interoperability remains the goal all standards need to achieve. Every single standard needs to have the possibility of openness on application. Wider adoption of a standard requires more openness; open standard pursue interoperability between users.
 
4. Case studies: Enterprises Standardization of Haier
Haier is the world’s 4th largest white-goods manufacturer and one of China’s top 100 IT companies. Haier switched from the manufacturing of home appliances to being the service provider for home living system. These serves include appliances maintenance, internet information, home automation, household management, home entertainment and home securities, etc.. By making this historical change, Haier can achieve its long term goals. It has become the creator and leader of the living network era, the leading provider for social service networks and technologies, and the most admired brand of the information era.

To accomplish this Haier developed the U-home (Ubiquitous home) system. The goal of Haier's U-home system is to build direct trading relationships with clients, and to be capable of providing a  value-added services. 

As well as offering products such as household appliances and IT applications, U-home also offers safety and security services, education, financial, shopping, tourism, medi-care, entertainment and household management services. All these services are provided by the Haier trading system and Haier urban life service system, which are servers connected with the home appliances.

Haier's U-home system is a large and complicated system, and its success depends on the interoperability and openness of the standards of the system. The standardization of the Haier group was certainly in their best interest. It started as the leading manufacturer of network-connected household appliances, moved into digital home system and building automation, and then began standardization discussions and development. Haier is becoming the network service innovator by initially offering a community service system and a remote medical service. In the near future, Haier will become the pioneer in new technical fields like  renewable energy, sensing techniques, and integrated environmentally-friendly residences.

Haier's U-home system is a highly integrated solution and standardization played a crucial role in the implementation of it. In the practical world, there are so many different manufacturers and service providers involved in this system, and only the interoperability and the openness of the standards can make this system work.

5. Interoperability and openness of home network standards 
To make the home network system work, a lot of companies like Haier have made great efforts in standardization over the last ten years. “China Home Network Standard Working Group” of the Ministry of Information Industry was established in 2001. Six industrial standard documents were published in 2005 and one was published in 2006. In last two years, over 10 working items for national standards were accepted, and three proposals for national standards were accepted.

To promote adoption of these standards, an industrial alliance called ItopHome was established in 2004. Competitive companies and downstream and upstream markets are linked to each other in an industrial chain. Cooperation with other companies and industrial alliances becomes more and more popular.

U-Home's standards are openness-based standards. Figure 1 shows the whole system of U-Home's standards and technologies.

    Figure 1: The system of U-Home's standards and technologies

In this figure, technical requirements for digitalized home appliances, technical requirements of digital homes, requirements for digital products becoming household appliances, and digitalization requirements for traditional household appliances, are all connected with U-Home's communication technologies, which are various and diverse. Generally speaking, the U-home systems use embedded wideband access, audio/video encoding, high-speed wireless transmission techniques, voice control, remote control techniques and intelligent household gateway technologies.

U-home also provides interoperability between different networks and technologies. This interoperability is implemented by the household gateway and principles of openness. Figure 2 shows the interoperability solutions for U-home's systems. Figure 3 shows the application for this interoperability solution.