The Small Business Administration revised its size standards for 41 industries to comply with the most recent version of the North American Industry Classification System (NAICS).

Most of the SBA’s changes involved increasing the permissible size of small manufacturing firms for products such as clay building materials, paperboard, tobacco, footwear and metal products. All together, the SBA size standards were changed for 41 current NAICS codes.

The SBA changes, announced in an interim final rule in the Federal Register this month, will go into effect on Oct. 1, with public comments accepted until Oct. 19.

The SBA’s modifications were tailored to the recent update of the NAICS.

In August 2011, the Office of Management and Budget announced the 2012 version of the NAICS, which is an update from the 2007 version.

NAICS 2012 created 66 new industry codes with new content, either by splitting or merging industries in NAICS 2007. New codes were assigned to 10 industries, and 13 NAICS codes were reused.

Most of the modifications were aggregations of manufacturing industries into a broader category. The number of 6-digit manufacturing codes fell from 472, in NAICS 2007, to 364, in NAICS 2012.

For example, four NAICS codes, for women’s, men’s, plastic and other footwear, were consolidated into a single category of footwear manufacturing. The size standard was raised from 500 employees for the four codes, to 1,000 employees for the new NAICS code.