S. Joe Bhatia, president and CEO of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), recently attended an Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) board meeting in Washington D.C., where he explained how collective participation in standardization efforts can drive business performance.
Bhatia emphasized how U.S. standardization engagement, with the help of participating companies, enhances business opportunities and market access globally. Over 80 percent of global commodity trade is reliant on compliance with standards, and accredited product testing and certification can help enable access to markets and ensure product success overseas.
"One of the reasons that the U.S. has been a successful economy is because we have taken a leadership role in many technology sectors," Bhatia said in a post event interview. "If you think about how our GDP has grown over the years, 50 percent of our growth or so has come from new technologies, and we lead the world in many of these areas," he noted, urging stakeholders to get more engaged at the international level and domestic level.
"[Stakeholders] have a lot to contribute, from the way they design products, the way [they] manufacture them, and the way [they] sell them. And the way they are performing in the market is determined by how the standard and its collective wisdom is brought to the table."
He also noted how getting involved at all stages also guarantees an edge in business competition. "Would you really want your competitor to dictate the future of how you do business?" Bhatia said. "That competitor could be somebody not just from the U.S, but somebody from China, somebody from Europe, somebody from another part of the world."
ANSI is committed to educating companies about their impact in standardization through Standards Boost Business—an outreach initiative to help U.S. businesses understand the power of standardization in driving business growth, spurring innovation, and advancing U.S. competitiveness. Coordinated by ANSI n partnership with 30 organizations from across the standardization community, this free online resource is designed to help corporate leaders understand the strategic and economic value of standards to business and to our overall national competitiveness.
To learn more, visit www.standardsboostbusiness.org.
See the full S. Joe Bhatia interview with AEM here.
Collectively, the equipment manufacturing industry is doing a great job of engaging in standards development work.
For example, AEM has funded ANSI's leadership role as secretariat of a number of prominent International Organization for Standardization (ISO) committees, where the world comes together to develop international standards for tractors, earth-moving machinery, graphical symbols, and elevating work platforms.
These leadership roles on ISO committees are very important for the U.S. to hold from a larger political and strategic perspective… but these activities pay dividends for each and every one of you as well.
When ANSI holds a leadership role in an ISO activity, we have a clear advantage when it comes to communicating the preferences of our U.S. stakeholder community. That means you. And when your preferences make it into an international standard, you can see a clear positive result on your bottom line.
You don't have to change your manufacturing practices to suit someone else's whims. You sell more products and services. You enter new markets. And you do all of this because you were at the table. You were there when the standard was written.