Overview
The Company Member Forum (CMF) provides a venue for ANSI members representing the broad spectrum of U.S. industry to come together to discuss national, regional and global standards and conformity assessment issues and collectively shape and influence U.S. policy in the domestic and international arena. Many ANSI corporate members cite this cross-industry networking as one of the primary benefits of membership, which often results in alliances between different Industries and cooperative partnering to leverage resources. The CMF meets twice a year, typically in the Spring and Fall (in conjunction with World Standards Week). Any Company Member of ANSI is welcome to attend.
Functions
As a membership forum of ANSI, the functions of the ANSI Company Member Forum include the following:
- Provide a venue for discussion, networking, and information exchange among members from a defined interest category
- Provide a mechanism for early warning and intelligence gathering on relevant trends
- Address issues of interest to their membership category and galvanize implementation at their constituent level
- Identify broader-based issues to be addressed by an identified ANSI governance body
- Assume an active role in ANSI membership recruitment and retention
- Serve as the one place within ANSI where participants can represent their own organization’s interests
Some of the broad issues the Company Member Forum works to advance include:
- Developing solutions to cybersecurity and interoperability challenges faced by industry
- Attracting newer and younger professionals to standards to counteract the “greying” of the profession
- Finding methods of timely notification about impactful legislation and regulations
- Expanding markets and exports of U.S. technology;
- Promoting global standards over national or regional standards;
- Eliminating non-tariff technical barriers to trade such as duplicative testing requirements;
- Reducing the number of marks of conformity;
- Supporting the supplier’s declaration of conformity while preserving third-party certification for those suppliers who choose to use it;
- Promoting voluntary standards over government regulations;
- Opposing management system standards that do not add value to products or end users or that mandate third party verification of conformance;
- Supporting greater efficiencies in the international standards processes of ISO and IEC.
