If you are involved in the design of a new product and agency standards are in the way of getting to what you would like your design to do.....find out if the part manufacturers you are dealing with are on those committees of the agency standard causing your headache and see if they will initiate the change you want.
For example....I worked for a company who wanted to be able to have three wires inserted into a terminal connector, but UL restricted input to only two wires. So....I worked with the connector company and found out a member of their team was on the UL committee who could make the modification to the standard to allow for a three wire input. And that person made it happen. By working with the manufacturer I was able to get, for my company's engineering team, the competitive edge they needed and knock out added cost to the BOM.
THIS is one of the more important reasons to be closely tied to the manufacturers of each part so that something like this can be achieved to help your products do well in their intended market segment.
