With the emergence of the WTO system, alignment of standards and other metrological issues, including testing, calibration and accreditation have become key issues to achieve the goal of a free trade system in world economic order. This is because standards and certification requirements different from one country to another act as “Technical Barriers to Trade”. Particularly, the importance of conformity assessment in trade was noted in the 1994 agreement on Technical Barriers to Trade (WTO TBT agreement). In view of the globalization of world economy, removal of technical barriers to trade is a problem to be tackled by international communities since it requires to harmonize legal regulations, documentary standards, accreditation system, etc.

In October 1999, 38 directors of the national metrology institutes (NMIs) all over the world signed a Mutual Recognition Arrangement (CIPM MRA) of National Measurement Standards and of Calibration and Measurement Certificates Issued by NMIs. The objectives of the CIPM MRA are to establish the degree of equivalence of national measurement standards maintained by the NMIs; to provide for the mutual recognition of calibration and measurement certificates issued by NMIs; thereby to provide governments and other parties with a secure technical foundation for wider agreements related to international trade, commerce and regulatory affairs.

In order to secure the equivalence in calibration and measurement capabilities among the NMIs who signed the MRA, BIPM launched a program for international comparisons of measurements known as ‘key comparison’ which is still going on and expected to finish by the end of 2005 in 350 fields of measurements.

In addition, 38 laboratory accreditation bodies of the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation (ILAC) signed in January 2001 the MRA (ILAC MRA) to promote the acceptance of accredited test and calibration data. The purpose of the ILAC MRA is developing a global network of accredited testing and calibration laboratories in order to provide accurate results and ultimately to realize the free-trade goal of “a product tested once and accepted everywhere”.

Furthermore CIPM and ILAC exchanged a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) in November 2001 to cooperate together, which means NMIs should take care about the traceability chain not only in calibration but also in test and inspection. As a result, a basis was provided to disseminate measurement standards more effectively and systematically into the end user of the industry through the accredited test laboratories.

According to the ISO/IEC 17025 “General requirements for the competence of testing and calibration laboratories” which was adopted in 1999 with the revision of ISO/IEC Guide 25, it is required to evaluate uncertainty even for test results which was optional before. Therefore, the evaluation of uncertainty becomes important not only for calibration laboratories but also for testing laboratories as the uncertainties of test data can be used as an indicator of the quality of test results.

As a matter of fact, most of the testing subjects are closely related to materials properties and in this sense, it is urgent to develop standardized testing procedures of materials properties and Certified Reference Materials (CRMs) which have much narrower uncertainty band than ever before.

Having recognized the vital importance of materials measurement and testing technology in trade, the G7 countries already initiated in 1982 a multilateral program known as the Versailles Project on Advanced Materials and Standards (VAMAS) and they have been cooperating each other for the last 20 years. Now it became a worldwide concern with the increase of trade in material products and it is no more a problem that could be dealt by the G7 countries only.

However, cooperative activities for the development of standards to evaluate materials properties have not been active in the APEC region due to the diverse bodies and activities involved. Although many researchers in materials science and engineering are concerned with the development of advanced materials itself, very few people care about the traceability of measurement standards of testing methods and the quality of the test results. Thus it is believed to be vital to establish a cooperative framework to deal with such matters among the APEC member economies if their needs are to be met properly.

In order to meet such a regional demand, efforts have been made to establish a multilateral cooperative framework over the past several years. All those efforts, as preparatory phase activities for the establishment of a regional cooperative framework in materials evaluation technology, were supported by the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) and Korean Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST).

Particularly at the Seminar for Developing an APEC S&T Network in Materials Testing and Evaluation Technology, the signing of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was agreed upon to establish the “APEC Network for Materials Evaluation Technology (ANMET)”. - Records of discussion agreed at the seminar