Current trends in industrial metrology

The advancing digitalisation of manufacturing companies is the primary reason for the current changes in QA. In the following, however, we focus on the aspect and trends of industrial metrology:

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• metrology directly on the shop floor: the closer the metrology can be to the shop floor, the better. In-line or near-line solutions are becoming more commonplace and therefore companies also expect more and more "plug and play" solutions for integrating and automating the metrology into production lines.

• Process assurance and product inspection are becoming much more pronounced areas of metrology in companies. The safeguarding of processes takes place on the line - here the requirement for speed predominates; the inspection of dimensions, shape and position remains in the measuring rooms - here the requirement for accuracy predominates.

• metrology is becoming simple(er) to use: users in manufacturing are not experts in metrology. Therefore, more and more emphasis is being placed on ease of use and comprehensibility of the results. New interface and operating concepts are demanded especially for users in manufacturing.

• Fast in execution. QA processes must keep up with the pace of production. This means measuring faster, concentrating on the essentials and not having to do all the steps again in case of repetitions.

• Directly in the feedback to the processing machine. If an error / problem is detected, it should be reported and solved very promptly. The rapid development of corrective values has become an essential goal of QA.

• Predictive support through the use of AI. Trend changes are detected before production runs "out of tolerance". This is where AI solutions will come in over the next few years to support users, not overrule them.