IS Standards Used in FMTTI Testing Explained

When manufacturers ask us which IS standards actually sit behind FMTTI testing, the honest answer is: it depends which part of the machine you're looking at, because the standards are split across three separate BIS sectional committees, not one.

The three committees

BIS organises farm machinery standards under three sectional committees, each with its own scope. Between them, the institute's published lists show 264 standards.

FAD 21 is by far the largest of the three, which makes sense — it covers the broadest slice of equipment, from tillage and sowing gear through to harvesting, threshing and even forestry tools. FAD 11 is narrower but structurally important, since it's the committee behind tractor and power-tiller standards, the category where FMTTI testing also carries a national type-approval dimension. FAD 20 sits in between, covering general farm implements and machinery.

FAD 21 also maintains liaison with ISO/TC 23, the international technical committee for agricultural machinery, and its various sub-committees covering crop protection equipment, harvesting and conservation equipment, powered lawn and garden equipment, and forestry machinery. That liaison is worth knowing about if you're trying to understand how an Indian IS standard lines up with an international one.

How current are these lists

Here's the part we think every applicant should know before they go hunting for a specific IS code: across all three committees' published lists, the most recent publication year shown is 2012, and no entry carries a reaffirmation date later than 2012. The majority of entries were published before 2000.

We don't read that as a gap or a problem — standards bodies reaffirm, amend or supersede documents on their own schedule, and a standard published decades ago can still be the live, correct one to test against. What it does mean is that the list as published is a snapshot, and snapshots age. The list describes the institute's own published page, which may lag behind BIS's live register at any given moment.

So our practical advice is simple: treat the published list as your starting point for understanding which committee and which broad family of standards applies to your machine, but confirm the current status and revision year of the specific IS code you need directly with BIS before you rely on it for design, labelling or compliance purposes. That's a five-minute check against BIS's own register, and it's the only way to be certain you're working to the current revision rather than the one shown on an institute's list.

Where this fits with FMTTI testing

IS standards and FMTTI testing work alongside each other rather than one substituting for the other. BIS sets the national product and safety standard; FMTTI's own engineers are the ones who physically test your machine against the relevant performance and, for tractors, type-approval requirements. If a standard specifies a method or a tolerance, that's typically folded into the test procedure the institute follows — but the certifying body for the standard itself is always BIS.

We guide manufacturers and dealers through working out which committee's standards are relevant to a given machine, and we coordinate and liaise with FMTTI on scheduling and documentation — but we don't test anything ourselves, and we're not BIS. If your question is "is IS XXXX:19xx still the current revision," that question belongs to BIS, and we'll always point you there rather than guess.