If you can’t trust your measurement system, you can’t trust the data it produces.

Ford had a problem. On a small number of vehicles, the powertrain hardware and software malfunctioned.

“GD&T was developed to address the many problems that had been encountered over the years as companies tried to describe their part geometry.”

The rapid growth of in-line gaging over the last few years has been focused primarily on the use of this approach as a tool for improving quality.

The global automobile industry is reaching record levels with the production of more than 80 million units in 2011 supported by more than EU 50 billion investment in research and development, according to BDW Automotive.

In manufacturing, repeatable, measurable process is prized while “winging it’ is verboten. And for good reason: process equals discipline, safety and efficiency.

Faced with slimmer profit margins in a shrinking economy, today’s leaders of manufacturing businesses find themselves scrutinizing every aspect of their business model to find ways to shave costs.  Profitability targets are getting harder and harder to attain, while ever-present threats of economic trouble loom ever larger.

Today’s manufacturers have plenty of options when it comes to probes, as advances in probing technology have allowed for better and faster machining operations.

GD&T is difficult to get right even though it is very logical. What does “right” mean? Right means several things, but mainly that it imposes achievable, fully function based and only necessary permissible limits of imperfection using absolutely syntactically correct code.

As the New Year begins, it appears the automotive industry has weathered the literal and figurative storms of 2012. The criticism concerning lack of industry innovation has momentarily quieted as 50 new models were introduced in 2012.