An inspection standard that allows inspection equipment to communicate directly with a broad range of manufacturing software systems has been adopted by the American National Standards Institute. The Dimensional Measuring Interface Standard (DMIS) version 4.0 is expected to become the common language used between computer-aided design systems and coordinate measuring machines throughout the world. "DMIS 4.0 will spark a revolution in manufacturing when inspection machines constantly feed back data to the design software that was used to create products," says Woody Noxon, president of the Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing International Inc., the consortium that developed the standard. "Product design teams will work seamlessly with manufacturing engineers using a common inspection language. Reportedly, this process can yield a time savings in offline programming as high as 90%."