Hello readers! 2009 brings CMSC into its 25th year. CMSC has grown from a small gathering of users and developers who had a common problem to solve—the standardization of theodolite targets.

Olkiluoto, the world’s largest and most modern nuclear power station, with an output of 1.600 Mwatts, relies on German technology. During the final assembly of turbine manufacturing at Siemens, blades are installed to the rotor and measured in the housing.

As you read this you will, no doubt, have already made (and perhaps broken) your New Year’s resolutions. I’d like to propose one that we, as business leaders, have a special responsibility to follow and whose failure we hear about in the news almost every day.

(Delcam International Inc.: Windsor, Ontario, Canada) -- Version 5 of Delcam’s PowerINSPECT software includes support for five-axis scanning with Renishaw’s REVO probe.

(Metris: Leuven, Belgium) -- Metris (MTRS, Euronext Brussels) releases Laser Radar Driver 5.1 software to set new precision standards for automated, noncontact inspection of holes in large measuring volumes.

(Hexagon Metrology: North Kingstown, Rhode Island) -- Hexagon Metrology (London, U.K.) has announced the acquisition of Technodigit SARL (Lyon, France), developer of 3DReshaper software, a software package designed for 3-D point cloud and 3-D mesh manipulation for reverse-engineering, rapid prot

(Geomagic: Research Triangle Park, North Carolina) -- Geomagic software has been selected by Team North American Eagle in its quest to set a new land speed record by reaching 800 mph.

(FARO Technologies Inc.: Lake Mary, Florida) -- FARO, the world leader in portable 3-D measurement and imaging technology, announced that it has won the Defense Manufacturing Excellence Award from the National Center for Advanced Technologies (NCAT).

During a recession, the concept of lean should make absolute sense to an information technology (IT) manager who wants to pursue every channel to increase efficiency and productivity.