In some manufacturing environments, quality technicians must work with tolerances as small as 0.005 millimeters when verifying part dimensions. Mike Rovillo, senior quality engineer at VDO North America (Cheshire, CT) knows how tricky it can be to measure such microscopic dimensions.

VDO, an automotive parts manufacturer for General Motors, Ford, DaimlerChrysler and some European and Japanese automakers, needed to find an inspection system within 60 days that could conduct part measurements for a prototype fuel pump. "We needed to launch the new fuel pump on a very aggressive timeline," Rovillo says.