Do Standards Stifle Innovation?

Standards are used for certain reasons and although it is true that some will stifle competition or even innovation, it does not need to be that way.

Standards are also to ensure the future of a machine as spare parts can be readily obtained and fewer are needed for a range of machines build to the same standards. This makes reliability a better bet and you don't need to keep spares for all in stock and also you don't need a specialist to maintain it for each piece of machinery.

Standards do just that, they standardise across the whole range of different engineering applications so that the principle stays the same and also the knowledge needed to fix it is the same. In a word it is cheaper for the user.

The other big issue is control of safety. That is why the biggest and first standards are from the military, government and automotive industry, although the automotive industry also uses it for blocking out products.