1) Promotion of international
exchanges
[Past Bearing Industrial Associations Executive Meeting of Europe, USA and Japan] November 1993 : The 1st Executive Meeting in Key Largo, Florida At the 7th meeting held at San Francisco in September 2005, it was proposed to establish the World Bearing Association (WBA) to deal effectively with issues of common concern for the bearing industry in conformity with the related laws and regulations. Consequently in September 2006, the inaugural general assembly of the WBA was held in Kyoto, Japan
[WBA
General Meetings in the past] In
order to publicize the importance of the bearing industry and the fact that a
bearing is a product friendly to the global environment, the WBA issued in May
2005 a brochure, “Bearings and the Environment”.
New Awareness Campaign Against Product Counterfeiting In the last two decades, counterfeiting in general has grown by 10,000 percent, globally. While there has been much reporting about consumers being taken advantage of by counterfeits in music, film, home electronics and designer clothing, a far greater risk lies in industrial counterfeiting of items such as tires, seals and bearings. All these products are safety-critical and fake versions pose a real threat. As a result, the World Bearing Association (WBA) has launched an awareness campaign to inform about safety hazards arising from counterfeit bearings.
Target for global warming countermeasures: Reduce carbon emissions (unit: tons per bearing production volume) 23% by 2020 in comparison with the 1997 level. Target for industrial waste countermeasures: By 2020, raise the industrial waste recycling rate to 96% and reduce the waste final disposal amount by 91% in comparison with the 2000 level.
The JBIA, along with setting and revising the Japanese Industrial Standards (JIS) and Bearing Association Standards (BAS), participates in international standardization activities as the subcommittee studying bearings within the Japan Industrial Standards Committee. Also, the JBIA has contributed aggressively to international standardization over the last 40 years by participating in meetings of the ISO/TC4, the bearing-specialist arm of ISO, beginning with the eighth meeting of this organization, which was held in Torino in 1961. The JBIA hosted the 12th ISO/TC4 meeting, held in Tokyo in 1969, as well as the 20th ISO/TC4 meeting, held in Yokohama in 1995. Some 83 participants from 23 countries participated in this 1995 meeting in Yokoyama, making it the largest ISO/TC4 meeting held until that time in the more than 50-year history of this organization.
In regard to standards development with the ISO/TC4, the JBIA submits proposals to this organization on an ongoing basis with the aim of optimizing existing standards, and in recent years it has proposed new standards to the ISO/TC4 and participated in projects for their development. One of these is ISO 15241, which was enacted in 2001 and was developed on the basis of JIS standards under the leadership of Japan. ISO 15241 is an important basic standard that designates quantity codes for rolling bearings. Also, the JBIA is playing a central role in the development of standards for linear bearings, which are becoming an increasingly important field within the bearing industry.
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