While there are many important quality management principles, this time we will look at continuous improvement. Perhaps the idea most commonly associated with quality, it means never being satisfied with the status quo.

While you may be familiar with the concepts behind additive manufacturing, the inspection methods themselves may not be as well known.

Additively manufactured parts face unique testing challenges. Along with many aspects of additive manufacturing, testing and inspection of additively manufactured parts is now being studied. Last October the ASTM International Additive Manufacturing Center of Excellence announced its first set of R&D projects.

The robotics industry is not slowing down. Last year the robotics industry shipped more robots to North America than ever before. And companies today are figuring out that they can utilize machine vision and robotics in many new applications.

Data isn’t everything. But it’s perhaps the main thing standing between you and a successful project. Continuous improvement takes effort, but more than anything, it takes solid information and analysis. In other words, wouldn’t it be more helpful to use statistical process control to find out where your process is going wrong, rather than just a hunch?

The Automate Show brought thousands of robots to Chicago this week. The robots were serving ice cream and beer, playing music, and in one case, boxing. They were wowing attendees with their speed and service, musical skills (the KUKA ones wore bows for their performance), and fight demos. Machine vision and image analysis was also on display.

If you’ve ever suffered through a difficult lesson, you were likely not in Gary Griffith’s class. Griffith teaches geometric dimensioning and tolerancing (GD&T), quality audits, measuring and gaging, and other quality-related subjects, and though the technical aspects could make for a dry learning experience, his students say Griffith makes it fun.

Most people would agree that quality is essential to have but difficult to execute. Among the many tools available, a quality management system (QMS) can provide a roadmap toward better quality. 

Picture a plant floor that is updating operators, managers and even other plants about potential machine problems. It would connect one machine to another and one system to the next. In order to maintain the highest quality, the systems would monitor any data that seems out of order or check on the line in process.

Whether you’re training employees, tracking defects, or conducting audits, a good quality management system should make life easier.