Benefits of a Fully Digital Comparator for Inspection of Orthopedic Implants

Manufacturers of orthopedic implants take great care to ensure that their products are of the highest quality. One way they do this is by performing numerous inspection operations at various stages throughout the manufacturing process. These have great value — however, they also represent considerable expense. Until recently, implant manufacturers reaped only a small fraction of the potential benefits of these efforts mainly because, in the end, few records of the inspection operations remained. Those that did exist were of poor and irregular quality. This is reasonable, considering in-process inspections are performed on the shop floor by system operators, whose primary function is to manufacture parts. Most inspection records consisted of a few checkmarks on a paper report indicating that the required inspection had indeed been performed successfully. These records do not do justice to industry-wide, high-quality standards.