Inspection planning for metrology interoperability

A meeting has been convened by NIST to precisely define the information required to generate a high-level inspection process plan.

At last year's International Metrology Interoperability Summit (IMIS), a call emerged to precisely define the information required to generate a high-level inspection process plan.

The DMIS standard addresses lower level process plans for a CMM; however, there seems to be no single standard that correctly, completely, and unambiguously addresses the information needed to generate a high-level inspection process plan.

Information contained in such a high-level plan is envisioned to be sufficient to drive any type of CMM: portable, fixed, contact, non-contact, scanning, etc.

Meeting detail (also found on the meeting web site): The impetus for the HIPP meeting grew out of a concern expressed by metrologists at the IMIS meeting held at NIST in 2006.

IMIS meeting attendees considered it of highest priority that a non-proprietary specification be defined for the information between part design and high-level inspection process planning.

At this HIPP meeting, we will begin to formulate answers to the following questions: What precisely is a high-level inspection process plan? What kinds of information are required to generate a HIPP? How much of HIPP generation can be automated, given the appropriate input data? Who are the metrologists, GDandT experts, and software engineers that are already defining this information in proprietary formats and how can those individuals be encouraged to help define a non-proprietary format? What is the role of end users and tier suppliers and how can they be encouraged to join this effort? Within which organisations should non-proprietary HIPP information development reside? The IMIS meeting already addressed some of these questions, but much more work needs to be done.

We have two full days for this work and hope to accomplish much in that time.

The HIPP meeting is open to all interested parties.

Metrologists and manufacturing quality managers from end user, tier supplier, and vendor companies interested in enabling standards-based interoperability are encouraged to attend.

At the HIPP meeting, attendees will begin development of a new non-proprietary interface standard, which will define the information needed to generate an inspection process plan information like part geometry, features, feature tolerances, and related part information (e.g, rigidity, reflectivity, surface finish).

This kind of information is already being defined in existing proprietary systems.

Such proprietary systems provide an integrated and semi-automated solution, and therefore offer an improvement over more manual systems; however, the data definitions are still proprietary, and therefore impede interoperability.

The work of this meeting is to define a non-proprietary (i.e., standard) version of the same information, i.e., that which is required to generate a high-level inspection process plan.

NIST is also hosting a consortium of consortia (CoC) meeting on the previous day, April 23, 2007 from 1:00PM - 5:00PM at NIST.

That meeting will debate the organisation of a semi-formal consortium of the various consortia worldwide, each or which is working to enable standards-based interoperability (plug-and-play) in metrology systems.

These consortia include the I++ group, the AIAG MEPT, the DMSC, the IA.CMM, ISO TC184/SC4, and the CMSC.

The CoC meeting is also open to any interested parties.

Members and leaders of the suggested consortia as well as end users, tier suppliers, and vendors of dimensional metrology systems are encouraged to attend the CoC meeting.

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