High-mix manufacturing has become the norm. Production lines are expected to produce more part variants in smaller batches and at a faster pace than ever before—all while maintaining very high quality.

To keep up, many manufacturers turn to automated quality control (AQC). Robots and 3D scanning systems promise consistency, repeatability, and higher throughput. In theory, automation should remove friction from inspection workflows. In practice, however, it often introduces a new and underestimated bottleneck: programming complexity.

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