GS1 is a multinational organisation with writers located all over the world. Without a unified GS1 documentation style, problems with inconsistency and poor readability can occur across documents and across departments.

This section specifies the procedure by which the GSMP process itself may be amended. All such amendments result in a revision to this GSMP Manual.

■ A proposal to change the GSMP process is submitted as a Work Request.

■ GSMP Operations and the Vice President of Standards Development review the Work Request to move forward.

■ Before further discussion begins, the Meeting facilitator:

□ Clarifies the objective for the discussion

□ Places a time limit on the discussion

□ Asks all who wish to speak to give their names

■ Be Considerate: The decisions made when creating standards will affect many user companies, all points of view are needed to make the right decisions. Please allow all participants to provide their points of view. Once a participant has explained their point of view, however, they should refrain from repeating it numerous times.

The GSMP is founded upon a set of principles which support the development of valid, user driven voluntary standards developed in an open, transparent and collaborative environment. That collaboration consists of a rich diversity of people and businesses working together in open discussions. To this end, we have agreed on the following Code of Conduct rules which clearly define expected behaviours and behaviours that will institute Conflict Management Rules.

The standard document templates include a section to acknowledge the individuals who contributed to the creation of a GS1 standard, GS1 guideline or other document. In most cases, this section should be included, though the Work Group has the discretion to omit it as in the case of a long-standing or historic documents. However, when a list of contributors is included, the following procedure should be followed.

The contributor list shall relate to the current release:

An organisation that has opted-in to a Work Group, whether by Explicit Opt-In or Automatic Opt-In, may opt out at any time. There are two ways to opt-out:

■ Explicit Opt-Out: An organisation may opt out of a specific Work Group to which it had previously opted in, whether by Explicit Opt-In or Automatic Opt-In.

An organisation that has joined GSMP and signed the IP Policy may opt in to a specific Work Group (Standards Maintenance Group or Mission-Specific Work Group) in one of two ways:

■ Explicit Opt-in: An organisation may opt in to a specific Work Group by signing an Explicit Opt-In agreement for that working group. Doing so does not affect the organisation’s status with respect to any other Work Group.