Welcome to the prelaunch page for Quality Digest Roadshow, a regular series dedicated to manufacturing, metrology, and the technology use in the pursuit of making stuff that’s cool, useful, or boring but essential. 

Quality Digest Roadshow will premiere in September 2025 on QualityDigest.com, our YouTube channel (YouTube.com/@QualityDigest), and on LinkedIn and Instagram. 

The premise  

From the pleasure of a good cup of coffee to the cutting-edge methods of designing a tomato-picking robot, the tiny charms of Lego figures, and prototyping the fabrication of the latest generation of jet engines, the realities of how things are made is fascinating.

How many different instruments can we use to measure the characteristics of a Lego block? It turns out... a lot.

But what’s missing in most how-it’s-made stories is the role that measurement—metrology—plays, and how something so seemingly boring (yes, we know measuring may seem boring, but it’s not, we swear!) can transform everything about how we live.

Behind every video of a soda-bottling line is the unseen story of “How do we know we put exactly 20 oz of Pepsi in there, and how do we know that the bottle cap won’t pop off when someone drops it on the floor”?

And other seldom-considered questions abound:

What was the weather like during the time of Charlemagne? Why does it matter?

• How do you measure the atmosphere in the time of Charlemagne with a desktop scanner? Where would you even begin?

• How do we know the Orion spacecraft can withstand a force of 10 Gs on top of an Artemis rocket and not rip apart on its way to the moon?

Quality Digest Roadshow is about asking those questions and revealing how the answers hide world-changing advancements.

It’s a documentary series from Quality Digest Films, a new initiative produced by the metrology industry’s leading industry news site, QualityDigest.com, and hosted by Christopher Allan Smith, an Emmy Award-winning documentary producer and director.

Each episode charts Smith’s travels across the United States as he visits the workers and organizations making the newest and coolest things, as well as learning about the methods and tools they use. Each episode in the series will reveal a bit more about how metrology is a largely unseen but critical part of creating the modern wonders of our age, which come at such a clip that their amazing stories almost seem commonplace. 

Join Smith as he wanders through assembly lines, development shops, clean rooms, and construction sites across America, asking people how they measure that stuff.

Along the way he’ll be introducing a general audience to what metrology is, as well as the applications it has in modern manufacturing.

From measuring the skin texture of (live) frogs to crime-scene analysis: Emmy Award-winner Chris Smith will be crossing the country looking for interesting measurement stories. Do you have one?

We’re looking for stories. Do you have one? 

We’re looking everywhere for stories, so get in contact with us.

We’re searching out interesting stories of measurement, like crime-scene data capture, pre-fire scans of Notre Dame, the LIDAR scans of the RMS Titanic and USS Arizona wrecks, as well as preservation scanning of such enduring icons as the Lincoln Memorial and the original USS Enterprise filming model at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. So, we’re casting a wide net.

Each episode would start with a question (“What do calipers have to do with picking tomatoes?”). We then interview several people on location to find out what they’re doing, how they’re doing it, and why it might be interesting, even surprising, to the lay person, and to those who call manufacturing or metrology their profession. There will be some surprises, a little humor, and a lot of interesting “how it’s made” information.

Do you, your team, your organization, or anyone you know have cool metrology or manufacturing stories to tell? 

To connect with us, please email CSmith@QualityDigest.com or contact us at Instagram.com/qualitydigest.

Quality Digest Roadshow audience:  

As one of  the world leaders in metrology news, Quality Digest reaches a professional audience well versed in metrology, business management, risk assessment, and business best practices. 

That said, Quality Digest Roadshow is a bit more general. We’ll still focus on metrology and manufacturing, but our goal is to reach the intersection of the metrology professional and those with a general science/manufacturing interest who may not even know what metrology is. 

In fact, our first episode, “What the Heck is Metrology and Why Should I Care?” is appropriate for older kids, teenagers, and also a business meeting or work environment. We also plan to have at least one episode on careers in metrology as a means to get the word out on behalf of the metrology industry.

Where will Quality Digest Roadshow be released?

Our plan is to present new, weekly episodes in September 2025 on QualityDigest.com, with either full episodes or condensed clips also showing up on YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

We host all our videos on YouTube, and they can be embedded in any website. Almost every time we shoot a story with a company, that company ends up sharing the video as something they’re proud to be associated with.

One of the objectives of this series is to open up and expand the Quality Digest audience. So, as each episode is released (and snippets are released in YouTube shorts, Instagram reels and TikTok), we expect this series to become the most- watched by the largest audience we’ve ever had.

About Quality Digest

For 40 years, Quality Digest has been bringing information to quality professionals. We are an online news and information source covering an array of quality management topics, including metrology, standards, compliance, Six Sigma, problem solving, employee participation, customer service, and lean.

We deliver feature articles and quality industry news via our e-newsletter, Quality Digest Daily, and online at www.QualityDigest.com. Our website receives more than 1 million page views annually, where users can find editorial content, live broadcasts, videos, and on-demand webinars presented by industry experts.

About your host, Christopher Allan Smith

Christopher Allan Smith is a four-time Emmy Award-winning director and producer who specializes in documentary storytelling and promotional films for companies and organizations big and small. His noted works include the documentary series A High and Awful Price: Lessons Learned from the Camp Fire and Labels: Lives Behind the Labels. In 2020, he served as an associate producer of Rebuilding Paradise, the documentary directed by Academy Award-winning director Ron Howard about the 2018 Camp Fire in Paradise, California, where Smith and his family lost their home.

Episodes in preproduction

S01E0X—“The Metrology of NASA’s Europa Clipper” featuring NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

S01E0Y—“When Technology Goes Bad: How a Technological Issue With NASA’s Galileo Probe Created a Years-Long Rift in the Science Community”

S01E0Z—“This Is Enterprise Calling: The Technology and Metrology of NASA’s Deep Space Network, the Most Sophisticated Communications Network Ever Made”

S01E0A—“Andy’s Coming! The World-Class Metrology of the Lego Ecosystem  With Brickmania”

Episodes in postproduction

(In chronological order of production, not release)

S01E01—“What the Heck is Metrology?” with the Walter Cronkite of metrology, Dirk Dusharme

S01E02—“How Can Lasers Help NASA Get Back to the Moon” with Bob Elliot of Lockheed Martin

S01E03—“How Do You Use a Desktop Scanner to Measure Weather in the Time of Charlemagne?” with the Sierra Streams Institute