The cost of printing and selling DIN Standards is only one factor influencing the price of standards. A more important factor influencing the price is the cost of developing the standards and managing standards projects, which involves:
- drawing up documents containing the generally recognized state of technology which is gathered through the participation of all stakeholders in standardization and which is therefore highly reliable,
- carrying out a "public enquiry" procedure during which experts can comment on the published draft of a standard,
- publishing and selling new standards, for example on DIN and DIN Media's various websites,
- ensuring the coherency and consistency of the entire body of DIN Standards and avoiding duplication within that body,
- harmonizing German Standards with European and International Standards, and
- regularly reviewing standards for their currency and relevancy in terms of the state of the art.
Furthermore, DIN makes regular investments in its IT systems used to optimize the standardization process and to make access to standards easier - income from the sales of standards is used to finance these investments. Examples include our in-house document management system which can be accessed by our external experts, web conferencing software, and Internet portals providing access to standards in a specific sector at a lower cost.
More than 36,000 external experts from industry, research institutes, consumer organizations and the public sector provide the content of our standards. These experts provide their knowledge gained in practice - for general use in practice.