By Jason Malcore, Senior Director of Safety & Product Leadership, Association of Equipment Manufacturers --
2025 marked a turning point for the non-road equipment manufacturing industry.
A wave of new regulatory requirements came into effect, signaling the end of an era defined by the mitigation of immediate safety and environmental risks associated with product use. In its place? A new way of thinking about regulation and compliance, one that demands stewardship over the entire product lifecycle.
This shift isn’t just incremental – it’s transformative. OEMs are now expected to be able to collect massive amounts of data and leverage it to learn everything about their product offerings, including:
- Where their products come from
- What those products are made from
- How those products are made
The evolving regulatory environment of today requires OEMs to invest enormous amounts of time, effort, and resources into wrestling with new demands and navigating longstanding requirements that haven’t gone away. This includes, but isn’t limited to, engine emissions and product safety issues like:
- The California Air Resource Board’s Tier 5 rule and China’s NR 5 rule, which are currently under development
- Regulations associated with the European Union’s Machinery Regulation, especially as new countries enter the global regulatory landscape with their own product-related rules (such as India, the Gulf States, and Mexico)
Fortunately, AEM’s Safety & Product Leadership staff and our member-led technical committees are hard at work engaging our industry peers to help address the risks associated with the changing regulatory landscape. Over the course of 2026, our team will focus on four major initiatives to help manage our industry’s regulatory workload:
- Communication: The Safety & Product Leadership Department intends to strengthen our regulatory and compliance-related communication efforts. This includes regular contacts on Safety & Product Leadership Department events, initiatives, ongoing regulatory work, and department-wide strategies.
- Industry Alignment: The effectiveness of AEM relies on participation and collaboration with our member companies. This, in turn, drives our industry toward stronger alignment, which not only keeps our members informed on key issues, but coordinates our industry behind specific talking points and compliance strategies.
- Coordination with International Stakeholder Groups: To address the challenges of the global regulatory environment, AEM will need to reach out to, and coordinate with, our sister trade associations around the world. Organizations like CECE, CEMA, Euromot, EMA, AIAG, and others, provide key contacts, local knowledge expertise, and the bandwidth needed to address the expanding world of regulations. The Safety & Product Leadership Department plans to create stronger contacts with our global partners and is working to align our global industry around key regulatory talking points.
- Stronger Regulatory Engagement: As AEM continues to build its regulatory engagement infrastructure, it will be crucial for our department to use its resources to build out our relationship with agency staff members, establish the subject matter expertise of our association staff, and effectively educate government decision-makers on the nuances and needs of our industry.
From an organizational risk perspective, the immediate future will look a lot like the recent past for non-road equipment manufacturers. But AEM and our member-led committees have worked diligently to expand our capabilities and enhance our reputation as a trusted voice for manufacturers. For the remainder of, we will continue to build on our experiences to help ensure our industry not only survives, but thrives, in this new era of product stewardship.
For more information on AEM Safety & Product Leadership activities and priorities, contact AEM’s Jason Malcore at jmalcore@aem.org.
