AENOR or Spanish Association for Standardization and Certification is the name given to an institution whose work is the development of standardization and certification within all areas of service and industry. This aims to contribute to the improvement of the competitiveness of companies and the quality of their products, all without neglecting the protection of the environment. On February 26, 1986, it was established by order of the Ministry of Industry and Energy to carry out these activities, this in accordance with Royal Decree 1614/1985 and was recognized by Royal Decree 2200/1995 as a standardization body that it can act as a certification body.
Currently there are more than 75,000 work organizations around the world that have an AENOR certificate. It has been his hard work and constant effort to overcome the great distances in terms of competitiveness that he has had a great growth in the field of conformity assessment. Thanks to the Spanish Association for Standardization and the presence it has in world forums, Spain can have a guarantee of participation in development regarding standardization, not to mention the great international prestige of the AENOR certificate.
In its initial years, this organization was dedicated to the creation of the main infrastructure to be able to develop its certification activity, which for the moment was subscribed to product certification. In the same way, the first technical certification committees were created, which to date exceed 40. In its first decade, product certification was focused mainly on electrical and construction materials, it was not until the end of the 90's. New fields began to be explored, such as crafts, food and services. Currently there are more than 100,000 products and services that have the AENOR certificate.
As for the certification of systems management at the end of the 80s, it was started with the certification of quality according to the standard UNE-EN ISO 9001. In the early 90s took place what was the Earth Summit in the city of Rio de Janeiro, which implied an expansion of environmental policies, in this sense AENOR was not far behind and in 1994 it awarded the first certificates in environmental management systems.
