Re: To buy or not to buy?
Nicely dodged, Sidney. There is a general point here. Many CBs originate from standards bodies, some from ship classification, some trade associations others purely commercial bodies. Two questions:
So what are DnV telling their certification customers? Is it material that there are 'Chinese walls' between the two parts of the business?
Everyone who can wants to have their fingers in any pies where they feel they can get some benefit from influencing an outcome - standardization is not different - you have users, certifiers, standardizers, industry bodies and accreditors all trying to influence what goes in a particular standard and then trying to control how it is used. There are even national representatives out there who try to block international standardization efforts because they don't want it. My lips are sealed! 
Plus ca change ...
Again this has always been the case. Not all standards will directly recoup their development costs in standard sales.
The whole idea of standardization is to satisfy an 'industry' need in order to reduce costs going forward as people manufacture, operate to standards.
Now I'm not going to speak for the supporting guidance to 9001 like the ones you mentioned (that's another thread) but, even if they don't sell well there is an argument that they provide a lot of value.
I don't understand how a Standards Developing Body gets involved with Conformity Assessment policies....
- Does it matter?
- Is any one route better than another?
Rule development for ship classification is a form of standardization.And a very successful one, by the way. We are approaching 200 years of the classification concept. But the classification folks don't tell their customers they must PURCHASE a copy of ISO 9001:2008 in order to keep their certs valid with the Certification Body side of the organization.
This is just to show that Standard Developers like to encroach on conformity assessment activities ....

Plus ca change ...
... because a standard which does not have a certification scheme associated with it, is destined to oblivion....such as ISO 9004, 10001, 10002, 10003, and all the others that comprise the documents under TC 176.
The whole idea of standardization is to satisfy an 'industry' need in order to reduce costs going forward as people manufacture, operate to standards.
Now I'm not going to speak for the supporting guidance to 9001 like the ones you mentioned (that's another thread) but, even if they don't sell well there is an argument that they provide a lot of value.


