Standardization News

A proposed new ASTM International standard will help consumer goods developers and manufacturers in the evaluation of their products to ensure product quality, consumer satisfaction and marketing success.

The proposed standard, WK29225, Guide for Design and Execution of Sensory-Instrumental Correlation Studies, is being developed by a task group of Subcommittee E18.03 on Sensory Theory and Statistics, part of ASTM International Committee E18 on Sensory Evaluation of Materials and Products.

The proposed new standard will assist users in creating instrument test methods that are most likely to provide meaningful results and can be well-correlated with valid sensory evaluation results.

"WK29225 will help establish quality control methods to help monitor changes and set pass/fail criteria for sensory properties of any product. The proposed standard will also convey the need to understand sensory properties of the product before the connection to instrumental results can be made," says Leonard Thibodeau, texture product manager, Brookfield Engineering Labs, and task group leader.

According to Thibodeau, the standard will be useful to suppliers and manufacturers of consumer products. Those in R&D and quality control should be the primary beneficiaries.

While members of E18 are mostly sensory evaluation professionals, Thibodeau would like membership in the instrument correlations task group to be more broadly based and include more instrumentation industry representatives and academic researchers.

CONTACT Technical Information: Leonard Thibodeau, Brookfield Engineering Labs • Middleboro, Mass. • E-mail: l_thibodeau@brookfieldengineering.com O ASTM Staff: Scott Orthey • Phone: 610-832-9730 • E-mail: sorthey@astm.org O Upcoming Meeting: Oct. 25-27 • In conjunction with the Society of Sensory Professionals • Napa, Calif.