This part of ISO 7250 provides worldwide and regional tables of design ranges for use with product standards for equipment design and safety that require ISO 7250 body measurement data input.

Anthropometric data for technological design are used and presented in many standards. However, there is currently no systematic way to update and revise those values in a timely manner, as the body sizes and variation of member body populations change with time. Further, the schedule of member body anthropometric surveys varies widely. Many industrial products are developed for regional or worldwide markets without a clear presentation of regional and worldwide ISO 7250 design ranges. Users of standards require the most appropriate body measurement values for their intended applications.

Together with ISO/TR 7250‑2, which serves as a continuously updated data source for most current anthropometric data from individual member bodies, this part of ISO 7250 provides a periodically updated data source for worldwide and regional design ranges, with guidance on sex differences. This part of ISO 7250 is intended as the single source of anthropometric data for equipment design guidance in standards.

While there are sources for individual member body data in ISO/TR 7250‑2, most standards do not use individual member body data for technological specification. This part of ISO 7250 is to be used whenever worldwide or regional anthropometric data are needed. In cases when there are no suitable measurements in this part of ISO 7250, the methods and justifications used in arriving at regional and worldwide values from the body measurement data of individual populations can be used with suitable measurement data.

The scope of this part of ISO 7250 is limited to the presentation of univariate design ranges of the type currently utilized in product standards (e.g. P1, P5, P95, and P99) and does not address shortcomings of using those values in multivariate designs. A separate standard on multivariate design is in preparation. In addition, this part of ISO 7250 does not address body measurements used in product standards that are not defined in ISO 7250‑1. The methods used in developing this part of ISO 7250 do not take into account the population size or sampling methodology of the member bodies, so statistical values from a sparsely populated member body could set regional or worldwide upper or lower limits. The reader is referred to ISO/TR 7250‑2 for details on sampling methods used in national surveys.