News

Two important appointments are approaching in the annual calendar of the activities of the European (CEN) and international (ISO) standardization committees for furniture: the plenary meeting of CEN TC 207 will in fact be held on the 1st of June while the plenary meeting of ISO TC 136 will take place already on May the 6th.

On these occasions, all the working groups report on the activity carried out during the year and important decisions about the organization and purpose of the technical committee are taken.
We remind that CEN TC 207 is currently structured in 9 working groups (WG) with these fields of application:

WG 1 – Requirements for domestic furniture
WG 2 – Requirements for children’s and nursery furniture
WG 3 – Office furniture
WG 4 – Requirements for outdoor furniture
WG 5 - Requirements for non domestic furniture
WG 6 – Requirements for educational furniture
WG 7 – Requirements and test methods for furniture surfaces
WG 8 – Requirements and test methods for hardware for furniture
WG 9 – Test methods.


ISO TC 136, on the other hand, is structured as follows:

WG 1 – Test methods for seats
WG 2 – Test methods for tables
WG 3 – Test methods for storage furniture
WG 4 – Test methods for beds
WG 5 – Dimensions of kitchen furniture
WG 6 – Test methods for children furniture
WG 7 – Test methods for mattresses
WG 8 – Test methods for furniture surfaces
WG 9 – Test methods for hardware for furniture.

The leadership of both technical committees is currently entrusted to Italy.

There will be news during the meetings, which we will promptly report you. Surely we can already anticipate that at European level the creation of a tenth working group will be formalized, which will deal with requirements and tools for the circular economy and will work on issues such as disassembly, refurbishment and repairability of furniture, to provide support to companies in the transition from a linear design logic to a circular one.

To these events, which obviously for this year will be held via web, all nations send their delegation, even if they do not have experts who actively participate in the ordinary activities of the groups.

At the UNI mirror meetings, the person chosen as head of the Italian delegation is a Catas technician: Paolo Balutto, head of the testing department on finished products and for years engaged as an expert at both CEN and ISO level. It is not the first time that our colleague Paolo plays this prestigious role but we would like to highlight a goal that testifies to the high quality of the contribution that Catas technicians provide to sector standardization, especially in a period in which the pandemic rather than blocking the activities at the standardization tables gave them a considerable boost, moving the meetings to online platforms and therefore multiplying the opportunities and people available to participate.