AGSC Standard Committee meets in Orlando, Fla.
A number of industry groups met in Orlando, Fla., late last week at mid-year Board of Directors and Committee Meetings. The National Windshield Repair Association (NWRA) and the Auto Glass Safety Council™ (AGSC) each held meetings with full agendas.
NWRA’s two American National Standards Institute (ANSI) committees, the Repair of Laminated Auto Glass Standard™ (ROLAGS) Committee and its Break Identification Standard (BIS) Committee met. ROLAGS™ members reviewed that Standard with an eye toward possible changes. The BIS committee reviewed comments to its initial draft release of the Standard.
“Comments are always helpful,” said BIS committee chair Keith Beveridge of Novus Glass in Saint Paul, Minn. “They help make a stronger final work product.”
The draft Standard will be revised and then re-released for final public comment before being submitted to ANSI, which the committee expects will be done before the end of this year.
The NWRA board of directors also met and devoted a large chunk of its meeting agenda to two new initiatives: its soon-to-debut “NWRA Trusted Tech” program and a new national warranty initiative.
“We are very excited to get both these programs going,” said NWRA president Jeff Reddell of Pace Glass in Texarkana, Texas. “They will offer great benefit not only to the NWRA membership but to the industry and consumers we serve.”
Reddell expects the programs to each have “soft launches” over the next few months and debut at Auto Glass Week™ 2016 in San Antonio, Oct. 5 to 7.
AGSC’s board of directors, its Marketing, Education and AGRSS Standards Committees all met in Florida as well. The Education Committee continued its work updating the AGSC technician certification program and concentrated on the development of new exam materials. The Marketing Committee previewed a new AGSC video, as well as its first annual directory, and discussed future initiatives which will also premier at Auto Glass Week ’16 in San Antonio.
But the four letters on everyone’s mind throughout the week—A-D-A-S—took front and center at the AGSC AGRSS Standard™ Committee meeting on Wednesday. ADAS stands for Automated Driver Assist System, a rapidly spreading technology that impacts glass replacement as well.
“Every car manufacturer is different and there are even differences in how to handle different models,” said AGSC Standards chair Bob Beranek of Auto Glass University in Sun Prairie, Wis. “It’s a technology our Standard will have to deal with.”
After a lengthy discussion that oftentimes veered from philosophical and ethical issues to the practical, the committee voted to include language about ADAS in its Standard.
“What that language will say, we do not know at this time,” said Beranek, “but I expect we will vote on it those specifics when we next meet in San Antonio in October.”
