The progressive digitalisation of manufacturing companies is the primary reason for the current changes in Quality Assurance (QA). In the following, however, we will concentrate on the aspect and trends of industrial metrology:

• Metrology directly in the production: The closer the measurement technology can get to production, the better. In-line or near-line solutions are becoming more and more commonplace and therefore companies expect more and more "plug and play" solutions for the integration and automation of measurement technology in production plants.
• Process assurance and product testing are becoming much more important areas of metrology in companies. The safeguarding of processes takes place on the line - here the requirement of speed prevails, the inspection of dimension, form and position remains in the measuring rooms - here the requirement of accuracy prevails.
• Measurement technology becomes easy(er) in the application: The users in production are not experts in metrology. Therefore, more and more importance is attached to simple operability and comprehensibility of the results. New user interface and operating concepts are required especially for users in production.
• Fast execution: The QA processes must be able to keep the pace of production. This means measuring faster, concentrating on the essentials and not having to repeat all the steps in case of repetitions.
• Direct response to the manufacturing machine. If an error / problem is detected, it should be reported and solved very promptly. The fast development of correction values has become an essential goal of QA.
• Predictive support through the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Trend changes are detected before production runs "out of tolerance". This is where AI solutions will be introduced in the coming years and support, not overrule, users.

Sincerely yours,

Prof. Dr. Heiko Wenzel-Schinzer, CDO