Bridging the gap is a popular idiom derived from Old English. In its earliest use—and not surprisingly—bridge meant “to make a causeway” and gap meant “an opening in a wall.” So, to the drywallers, civil engineers, and road construction crews of the early 14th century (Ha!), bridging a gap was quite literal.

I am in my tenth year as a part-time instructor at Western Michigan University, currently working with junior- and senior-level engineering students. I instruct the hands-on metrology lab of Dr. Pavel Ikonomov’s metrology class. We have about 15 weeks for this three-credit hour class to introduce metrology, focusing on precision measurement. We have about 45 students taking three hours of lecture and three hours of lab each week.

It’s a rare company that doesn’t want to implement a better quality system, resulting in performance excellence for their company, employees, customers and stockholders. However, the pursuit of quality is easier said than done.

If you ever get a chance to watch an aircraft being built, take it. Walking through the aircraft hangar at Northrop Grumman’s Palmdale, CA, facility, you will see two unmanned aircraft, each with a 130-foot wingspan, parked behind yellow tape. The scale of the aircraft and the desert setting make it feel like a movie set.