Margaret Fitzsimons, representing ETIM UK, has been elected to the Executive Board of ETIM International following the organisation’s AGM in Italy. Margaret will serve on the Board for the next three years.

Members of the ETIM Executive Board are elected from the ETIM International General Assembly, the body representing each of its 19 member organisations.

Margaret has represented the UK on the General Assembly since 2017 when the UK joined ETIM International and the data standard was adopted by the UK in the electrotechnical sector. In late 2019 ETIM UK expanded to become a partnership between the EDA and the Builders Merchants Federation (BMF), with each organisation overseeing the management and promotion of the ETIM data model in their sectors.

Of her appointment, Margaret said, “I am delighted to be able to represent the UK’s interests during strategic discussions about ETIM’s development. The universal adoption of the ETIM standard by UK manufacturers in the electrotechnical, building materials, plumbing, HVAC sectors continues to be a priority. The ETIM standard brings both reliability and consistency to the way technical product information is organised and made available to wholesalers and merchants. Without ETIM, the idiosyncratic organisation of product information wastes time and effort, putting the burden on the wholesalers or merchants to find workarounds.

“In the electrotechnical sector, the ETIM standard is a key part of the EDATA data pool. Every product in EDATA – and there are over 271,000 SKUs currently – offers technical information to Wholesalers using the ETIM structure. Wholesalers will notice that when they generate product data sheets from EDATA the technical specification carries the ETIM branding.”