Dimensional Metrology Standards Consortium to Demo New Standard

Nearing completion, the QIF standard will reduce information processing costs and quality losses

Published: Thursday, August 16, 2012 - 16:14

(NIST: Gaithersburg, MD) -- At the September 2012 International Manufacturing Technology Show (IMTS) in Chicago, the Dimensional Metrology Standards Consortium (DMSC) and eight software vendors will demonstrate standards-based workflow of manufacturing quality data. The emerging standard, Quality Information Framework (QIF), is an XML-based neutral format for quality information that covers the scope of quality measurement plans, measurement results (including ASME Y14.5), measurement rules, measurement resources, and analysis of results (multipart statistics). The DMSC believes that QIF will reduce information processing costs and quality losses from unnecessary measurement information translation, enable seamless exchange of measurement information, facilitate enterprise agility, enable lower product cost, and reduce costs of component integration and maintenance.

The demo in booth E-4779, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., each day of IMTS, will show exchange between multivendor products, of inspection plans and results data supporting an AS9102A-compliant first-article inspection process. Further, some of the solutions will be exchanging first-article inspection report data with an MTConnect factory-monitoring application running in the IMTS Emerging Technology Center. A founding principle of QIF is that all information models for transporting quality data are derived from common model libraries so that common information-modeling components can be reused throughout the entire quality measurement process, and as a consequence, the entire process will be inherently interoperable.

The DMSC is an A-liaison to ISO and an ANSI-accredited, nonprofit standards-development organization. The QIF is being developed by quality measurement experts from NIST, Lockheed Martin, Honeywell FM&T, John Deere, Rolls Royce, Pratt Whitney, GE Aviation, Boeing, Mitutoyo, Metrology Integrators, Origin International, Renishaw, Hexagon Metrology, Nikon Metrology, PAS Technology, Siemens PLM Software, and Zeiss. These are many of the same experts who continue to maintain the Dimensional Measuring Interface Standard (DMIS).

Again, the demo in booth E-4779, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., each day of IMTS, will feature eight commercial solutions that support the export and import of QIF data for effortless component integration. More information about QIF, including white papers, FAQs, and XML schema, can be found at www.qifstandards.org.

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NIST

Founded in 1901, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a nonregulatory federal agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce. Headquartered in Gaithersburg, Maryland, NIST’s mission is to promote U.S. innovation and industrial competitiveness by advancing measurement science, standards, and technology in ways that enhance economic security and improve our quality of life.