AHAM Readies Open Standard

Staff On Apr 1 2002 - 8:00am

The Association of Home Appliance Manufacturers (AHAM) is finalizing work on the first standard for connected home appliances, which will facilitate interoperability between white goods and other products and services both in and outside of the home.

The standard, officially dubbed AHAM CHA-1-2002 (Connected Home Appliances — Object Modeling), will be an open, voluntary consensus standard that has no licensing requirements and is available for use by any party. The result of an aggressive, 18-month effort involving 20 majap makers and suppliers, CHA-1 is being submitted to ANSI for approval as an American National Standard and will soon be available for purchase on the AHAM Web site, www.aham.org.

"Appliance manufacturers realized standardization was an important issue, especially in this emerging market," said AHAM VP/engineering Larry Wethje. "They worked with AHAM to agree on an industry consensus standard before becoming entrenched with individual company specifications." He added that the effort also relied on communication systems providers early on for critical feedback on the framework of the standard.

AHAM says the standard may lead to the development of a voluntary certification program that would assure retailers and consumers of a product's compatibility with CHA-1.