Saudi Standards, Metrology, and Quality Organization

The Saudi Standards, Metrology, and Quality Organization, known as Saudi Standards and abbreviated as SASO, is the entity responsible for ensuring public health, environmental protection, and public safety. It protects markets from counterfeit and adulterated goods by establishing technical regulations and conformity assessment procedures. It ensures the quality of national products by adopting appropriate Saudi standards, enabling them to compete in international and local markets. It was established in 1972.

The Saudi Standards, Metrology, and Quality Organization conducts its operations from its main headquarters in the capital, Riyadh, and is affiliated with the Minister of Commerce.

The organization has legal personality, administrative independence, and an annual budget issued in accordance with the general budget arrangements of the state. It has a board of directors responsible for managing its affairs and making necessary decisions to achieve its objectives. The organization has a governor with an excellent rank, appointed based on the recommendation of the chairman of the board of directors. He is the executive responsible for managing the organization.

The Saudi Standards logo, with its three colors: green, blue, and brown, along with the SASO quality mark, evokes a sense of assurance for consumers. Having either of these logos on a product provides a guarantee of both its quality and safe usage.

The organization's responsibility includes: adopting and establishing Saudi Standards for goods, products, services, measuring devices, calibration, determining sampling methods, testing techniques, technical inspection, quality systems, establishing technical execution standards, classifications, engineering drawings, terminologies, definitions, and symbols except for food and pharmaceutical products. It oversees quality control and its standards in the Kingdom, both in the public and private sectors.

The Saudi Standards, Metrology, and Quality Organization encompasses various sectors, including:

Specifications: The issuance of Saudi Standards is one of the most important activities and tasks performed by the organization with the aim of achieving an acceptable level of quality to preserve the health and safety of consumers. It is a document that is developed by consensus and approved by a recognized entity, made available for general and repeated use.

National Measurement and Calibration Center: Established in 1986, it is the entity responsible for preserving and developing national measurement standards.

Quality: It is defined as the extent to which a product meets the desires of the consumer, the suitability of the product for use, its compliance with established specifications, or the set of distinctive characteristics of the product that affect its ability to meet stated and implied needs.

General Administration for Certification: It is the entity responsible for issuing all product conformity certificates within the organization. It has four departments: Quality Mark Management, Efficiency Card Management, Conformity Certificate Management, and (IECEE) Certificate Management.

Product Safety: The Saudi Standards organization enhances product safety in the market by minimizing the entry of non-compliant products through the Saudi Product Safety Program (SALEEM), which includes issuing an annual compliance index and providing index information and reports to supervisory authorities and technical regulation drafting teams to prioritize them and facilitate trade procedures.

SABER Platform: It is an electronic platform aimed at protecting commercial establishments from fraud and tampering with technical documents. It tracks products to automate product tracking and technical processes that happened during the supply chain and increase the proportion of safe products. The platform allows traders and local factories to register the required conformity certificates and issue shipment conformity certificates electronically for consumer goods, whether imported, or locally manufactured, to enter the Saudi market.

Laboratories: The General Department of Laboratories is a regulatory body for technical fields. It was established to contribute to the preparation of Saudi Standards and the required research. The laboratories of the organization have been accredited according to the ISO international standard (ISO/IEC 17025:2017).

The technical regulations of the Saudi Standards, organization, which include: the technical regulations for building materials, electronic devices, auto parts, biodegradable plastics, water conservation tools, and the general regulations for energy consumption efficiency, are among the main legal bases that regulate the work of the Saudi Standards, Metrology, and Quality Organization.

The Saudi Standards Organization has several roles, most notably: granting conformity certificates, promoting awareness, establishing a database in the organization's fields, conducting research and studies, applying the National Measurement and Calibration system in the Kingdom, and performing the roles of the notification body and inquiry center for the Technical Barriers to Trade Agreement of the World Trade Organization.

The organization plays a prominent role at the regional, Arab, and international levels by providing several contributions and memberships in authorities and organizations. These include the Gulf Standardization Organization (GSO), the International Organization for Standardization (ISO), the International Organization of Legal Metrology (OIML), and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC). The organization has signed about thirty-nine agreements, technical cooperation programs, and memorandums of understanding.