4 Benefits of Metrology Technology in Automation Integration
Are you looking for a solution that enhances your shop’s efficiency and productivity? Metrology technology can help you achieve your automation integration goals. Let’s look closer at how embracing metrology technology can help ensure your business is positioned for success in today’s global manufacturing marketplace.
1: Time Savings
Metrology technology saves time by ensuring projects stay on schedule and have a shorter turnaround time. Metrology solutions eliminate the need for manual measurements, saving time in the production process and reducing the time needed for quality control inspections.
Using metrology technology can help slash build time from days to hours. In the past, automation integrators may need multiple employees to spend days using chalk lines and straight edges to map out a machine plan on the shop floor — then spend additional time consulting multiple drawings and vendors to make the build happen. However, a single employee can create a floor layout using metrology technology, reducing the overall build time and allowing other employees to focus on higher-value tasks.
In addition, having your own metrology equipment — rather than relying on external metrology service providers — also leads to significant time savings. Need to align two pieces of equipment? If you’re working with external resources, you’re at the mercy of their schedule — meaning your project (or parts of the project) are often halted in its tracks until your metrology provider can fit you in. With your tools, you can push the project forward faster than waiting for an outside supplier.
2: Cost Savings
Using metrology reduces the degradation of the project budget, leading to potential cost savings. Integrating metrology-based processes reduces the need for manual labour and its associated costs. Additionally, by ensuring consistent and accurate measurements, metrology technology reduces waste and rework costs.
Another way in-house metrology helps save money is by allowing you to rely less on expensive external resources. Having the equipment on-site helps build your internal knowledge base (more on that in a moment), allowing your in-house experts to serve as resources to educate other teams. As a result, you can turn to your in-house resources for guidance, sidestepping the need to bring in costly outside talent.
3: Improve Quality
Metrology technology boosts quality by allowing your business to align equipment, certify fixtures, and inspect parts to ensure you meet customer specifications at any time in the project build.
Consider this: In shops that don’t use metrology technology, if a manufacturer wants to align a press’s upper and lower tooling heads, their typical solution is to ask their internal machine shop to create a manual hand tool to accomplish the task. And while this may address the task at hand, it does so inefficiently — the tool they create may or may not work in the way the engineer intended, and even if it does work, it can only be used on that one specific tool. Manual tools also increase the chances of introducing human error and aren’t helpful at all when it comes to certifying fixtures.
Metrology tools, however, have a very large range of application opportunities. A tool like a portable measuring arm is highly universal and can be used during multiple project phases for many requirements. Additionally, metrology tools provide more accurate measurements than manual handheld tools. You can also save money because you don’t have to bring in as many resources to build a tool to check one feature, one time, on one cell.
Using metrology technology gives customers a sense of confidence. Knowing that your business uses high-end precision measuring equipment to get the best possible results ensures quality and empowers you to meet customer specifications at any time in the project build.
4: Internal Knowledge Base
In-house metrology allows your business to develop an internal knowledge base, ensuring you maintain a level of expertise that stays within your organisation and grows over time. Rather than being beholden to outside experts and external resources, handling metrology in-house means that you can grow your own in-house experts who can provide guidance and advice across business units.
Some businesses take the concept of an internal knowledge base a step further by adding information about metrology success stories, case studies, and best practices guidelines to the company’s intranet. Sharing these resources in a centralised, always-available way helps uplevel the entire company’s metrology knowledge, sparking conversation and ideas for areas where metrology technology can deliver the highest ROI.
Ensure metrology is in the mix
When it comes to automation integrators, including metrology technology brings numerous benefits. Not only does metrology technology save valuable time and costs, but it also boosts your overall level of quality and builds an internal knowledge base that will serve your business well into the future. To increase your chances of true automation integration success, ensure that metrology technology is in the mix.
Ready to learn more about how metrology technology can help automation integrators achieve automation integration success? Hexagon’s metrology technology drives smart manufacturing by empowering makers with highly accurate measurement, positioning, and inspection data.
Click here for more information https://go.mi.hexagon.com/l/980223/2023-05-01/35wpsc
