Anyone know exactly what the Vision Council and ANSI have to do with each other? I just filled out an interesting survey from the VC but there's a lot of confusing stuff on the internet about their relationship.
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Anyone know exactly what the Vision Council and ANSI have to do with each other? I just filled out an interesting survey from the VC but there's a lot of confusing stuff on the internet about their relationship.
About the same as the German TUV and the Car manufacturers, like VW. :tongue:
Is that supposed to be correct, or just a joke? I think the TUV may be similar to either organization, but I don't think either organization manufactures anything. Anyone else want to try?
Barry's analogy is valid.
The American National Standards Institute is a private non-profit organization that oversees the development of voluntary consensus standards for products, services, processes, systems, and personnel in the United States.
The Vision Council (also known as the Vision Council of America or VCA) is a nonprofit trade association for manufacturers and suppliers of the optical industry in the United States. Its services include research, training and industry networking events.
There is no direct connection between the two.
ANSI appoints a "secretariat" for each of its accredited standards committees ("ASC") and for Z80, it's the Vision Council. It used to be the Optical Laboratories Association, which merged with TVC a few years ago.
The secretariat ensures that ANSI rules are followed in the development and promulgation of standards.
In addition to being the Secretariat of Z80, TVC is a voting member of the ANSI Z80 and ANSI Z87.1 committees.
Maybe if Barry had said "car manufacturers association" instead of the "car manufacturers" he would have correct.
I consider car manufacturers to be Toyota, GM, etc. Eyeglass manufacturers to be Hoya, Essilor, etc.
I don't know much about manufacturers associations in either industry, but the VCA and ANSI connection seems to be at first glance an unholy alliance. I've always considered ANSI to be a neutral setter of standards. They use VCA as a secretariat?
Wow.
The survey VCA or TVC whatever sent me was decidedly commercial venture in flavor, asking a lot of questions about material warranties and what I thought about the idea of "selling" extended warranty types of things to my patients. I think ANSI is not for profit. I'd be surprised if VCA is non profit.
Surprise! The Vision Council is a non-profit corporation. Its primary sources of revenue are trade shows and membership dues. It's the US optical industry trade association - what's not clear?
It would be ridiculous, as well as non productive, to have a standards organization operating without interfacing with the industry the are creating standards for. The FTC, The SEC, etc., all do this. What's unholy? ODs dispensing on premises?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Bill Stacy
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There's no shortage of information about the structure of both the Vision Council and the American National Standards Institute (another non-profit corporation) on their respective websites.
ANSI, like its European counterpart DIN, act as neutral third party standards organization. It's relationship to eyewear is probably less than .0001% of its entire "catalog" of standards. There are ANSI standards for practically everything made in (as well as imported into) the United States.
And remember, the standards are voluntary. No lab (or dispenser for that matter) is obligated to follow their suggestions. However, the legal implications of not following them could be staggering.
[Quoting 2 up from here] There's no shortage of information about the structure of both the Vision Council and the American National Standards Institute(another non-profit corporation) on their respective websites.[endquote]
True but a lot of it is out dated, changed, etc. Tricky to navigate. It would be nice if they could erase old outdated pages from the internet. As for Barry's comment, 3rd up from here, I have no problem with them "interfacing" with industry members, but to have the industry people answering their mail? Still seems a bit unholy. As to dispensing on premises, I'd really much rather do it there than anywhere else, and to me it is an almost sacred duty because it's where I came from (where optometrists were also trained in opticianry).
Anyway, this all started when I wrote them a letter about mandatory prism thinning in progressive lenses, and it got returned because the secretariat had moved. I'm hoping it's now in Alexandria VA on Reinekers Ln? Allowing industry people to tell them it's a good idea is one of my pet peeves. 2nd only to MediCare allowing surgeons to "upgrade" cataract patients to multifocal IOLs. Now there was a truly unholy alliance.
Amen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr. Bill Stacy
Yes, TVC is currently on Reinekers Lane in Alexandria. But I'm not sure exactly what role you think they play in "mandatory prism thinning". ANSI Z80.1 only mentions prism thinning insofar as to describe how to correctly measure prism if prism thinning is present. If your lab is not honoring your request to not use prism thinning, TVC is not the "optical police". They would have no standing to intervene between you and your lab. Prism thinning is customary in this day and age, but is far from "mandatory".Quote:
Anyway, this all started when I wrote them a letter about mandatory prism thinning in progressive lenses, and it got returned because the secretariat had moved. I'm hoping it's now in Alexandria VA on Reinekers Ln? Allowing industry people to tell them it's a good idea is one of my pet peeves.
Assuming that your lab uses DVI, ask your lab's customer service to add a service code that disables prism thinning to your account master setup.
It's not that simple. I don't want to have it "disabled" as there are times when it's ok, especially if it's calculated properly. It needs to be an item that is controllable on a per order basis, which it is not except through special instructions which in my experience often get ignored or misunderstood. There should be a box on the order form which gives the orderer a selection of "no prism thinning", "lab calculate thinning prism" or "Specify thinning prism amount" with a field for the amount of yoked prism desired. This would fix the problem that ANSI helped create by their legitimizing software engineers' automatically including thinning prism in all digital PALs except where manually over-ridden, not an easy thing to do for a data entry person at the lab.
That said, I now believe it was VCA who is at fault for this situation, and am redirecting my letter to them with a cc to ANSI.