Across the life cycle of delivering a product to market, engineers face many obstacles. They often find themselves spending a lot of time reworking or repairing parts that fail inspection but may fit and function properly when assembled; or, they might pass inspection but do not fit with other parts and assemblies. Engineers also find themselves disagreeing with vendors concerning whether parts are made dimensionally correct or not, based on different understandings about design intent in regards to form, fit, and function. They must deal with team members who are intimidated when they see GD&T symbols on drawings, and grapple with high manufacturing costs due to tight tolerances on noncritical features.

Many of these problems are the result of an unclear definition of product and process requirements and a nonoptimal use of measurement data. The need has never been greater for a well-defined dimensional engineering process that enables the collection and analysis of relevant, meaningful variation measurements at every stage, from design through production.

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