Tolerancing: The Key to Parts Interchangeability and Manufacturing Cost

In discrete parts mass production, interchangeability is critical. All the component parts you manufacture need to consistently assemble to some minimum level of fit, functionality and finish. Manufacturing has developed a costly infrastructure to achieve this interchangeability. The problem is, this infrastructure performs at significantly below 100 percent. And perhaps the bigger problem is that when the infrastructure fails, the consequences are expensive. The fact that we are spending so much to achieve so little is due to a factor in the equation that nobody has really recognized or addressed. This hidden factor is the implementation of tolerancing throughout design, manufacturing and inspection.

A system, known as Valisys®, automates tolerancing implementation, thus making it possible to ensure part interchangeability. The system performs design validation so that tolerance specifications properly reflect design intent. It then communicates this information to manufacturing for better process design, thus promoting more productive manufacturing. In inspection, Valisys automates inspection programming and analysis based on the original tolerance specifications.