No one doubts the enormous benefits that open-architecture computing holds for quality control systems and continuous improvement programs. Using an open computing network, a supervisory control system would be able to feed all production data directly into a database that anyone in a factory could access. People in the company would be able to extract the data they need and import them into software packages best suited for the work that they are performing.

Consider the ramifications in a high-volume production line producing plastic automobile fenders. If inspection by a coordinate measuring machine (CMM) was to reveal a problem with a feature on a routine sample, then a team of quality and manufacturing engineers could retrieve and review the process data collected by the controller on the injection molding machine that made the part. They could find and stop a problem before it gets out of hand.