In mass-production industries, it has been realized that Product Design (PD) departments and Manufacturing Engineering (ME) departments under the same organization show quite different interests in the same product line. PD cares more about product performance. However the profound knowledge on the relationship between product tolerances and product performance gradually gets lost through generations and evolvement of product development. As a result, PD tends to put on the same or similar critical tolerances as new products continue to be developed, which in some cases should be tightened for required performance or can be relaxed for lower manufacturing cost.
Whereas ME is more interested in throughput that meets the specs. However, specs tend to be interpreted in a traditional and easy way that ME feels more comfortable with unless instructed differently by the PD and quality departments. This leads to some quality chasms that can cause unnecessary downstream operations and possible expensive quality problems. The emergence of micron-accurate optical inspection technologies to enable total surface visualization on critical mating surfaces provides an unbiased link across different departments within the organization and between manufacturers and suppliers to prevent quality issues from passing through the product life cycle.