Partial Justification for Participation

PARTIAL JUSTIFICATION FOR PARTICIPATION In the Dimensional Metrology Standards Consortium (DMSC, Inc.)

Some of the Benefits of Membership in the DMSC Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of the DMSC is helping to increase company profits. Every manager, whether or not an MBA, knows that profits consist of money saved as well as money earned. The DMSC promotes the advancement of metrology technologies, their compatibility and interoperability, which result in cost savings. Several studies by independent organizations, as well as within certain industrial communities, report that lack of product compatibility costs industry hundreds of millions of dollars every year. Hundreds of millions of dollars, needlessly spent, divided among even a hundred companies, is more than a million-dollar a year savings each. The DMSC also promotes the use of Dimensional Metrology (DM) as a viable tool for both manufacturing verification and product acceptance. In other words, the DMSC is marketing the purchase and use of more CMMs and other DM support hardware and software. The Goals and Objectives of the DMSC, Inc. are like a list of benefits in themselves. They include:

 Standards efforts: Promote and foster a consistent set of industry relevant metrology standards.  Stakeholders: Involve the stakeholders who will be impacted by these metrology standards.  Raise Awareness: Produce plans to raise the awareness of companies to the need for non- proprietary, interoperable standards.  Working with Others: Establish working partnerships with other organizations.  Forum: Provide a forum to promote standards development, interoperability, and conformance.  Procedures: Offer efficient procedures and tools to develop coherent and complete deliverables. Other more direct Benefits are to: 1. Assure that DMIS will remain a US national and an international standard, sustaining prior company investments in the development and implementation of the DMIS Standard. 2. Leverage company resources with other organizations in resolving shared issues which would be difficult, unfeasible or impossible for one company to undertake. 3. Preserve company investments in DMIS-enabled applications, software, and products. 4. Provide the opportunity to directly influence decisions toward resolving costly interoperability issues. 5. Gain advance notice and understanding of emerging standards affecting dimensional metrology. 6. Obtain insight and/or involvement in existing, related, or supporting standards activities. 7. Provide the opportunity to organize new committees to champion, create, extend, and harmonize standards. 8. Offer eligibility to provide guidance for the consortium as members of the DMSC Board of Directors. 9. Permit participation in any and all DMSC committees, without any registration fees. 10.Network with peers and other standards developers who have shared issues. Benefits of a more general nature:  Funded Development Projects: The DMSC, Inc. plans for funded development work; i.e., to hire expert contractors to do the research and development of needed technologies, as identified by our member companies, for their use first, then for incorporation into metrology standards. The costs of

1 this pre-competitive research is thereby shared by all members of the consortium, and all members benefit.  Cost Benefits: DMSC members have the opportunity not only to propose, but to guide the development of needed standards. The implementation of non-proprietary standards has proven to save on costs, sometimes as much as 25:1 (as in the petroleum industry – see below*).  Voting: Through its various standards committees, DMSC member companies have a vote whether to establish national and international emerging and related standards that will ultimately effect their means of doing business.  Proposals: DMSC members have the opportunity to propose developments that will improve systems and processes, as well as establish new or unified standards. To ensure that a company’s technology is properly represented by a standard it is necessary to participate in the development process.  Non-Competitive Environment: DMSC members deal with concerns important to the success of the metrology industry, in a non-competitive or pre-competitive atmosphere.  Problem Solving: DMSC committees develop practical solutions to meet user requirements and to reduce costly metrology issues.  Access to Information: DMSC members have access to valuable, informative documents through its Website and at various meetings of the committees.  Training Participation: DMSC member company employees may attend training sessions, such as the DMIS Training Workshops, at a significant discounts. These training workshops provide the opportunity to introduce newcomers to the standard or to update personal DMIS programming skills. ~~~~~~ (*ISO International Standards Bulletin, No. 7, 2006.) ~~~~~~~ Finally, “What’s in it for us?” In response to questions like, “How do we justify membership fees for the DMSC, Inc?”; and, “How does membership help us get good quality products out the door?” – we offer the following observations.

There are many direct and indirect benefits to membership.

1.) Getting good quality products “out the door” is a vital to any industry, whether those products are hard goods or software. Getting good quality products out the door not only this time, but the next time, and the next time is the key. This includes software vendors as well, who must continuously maintain, update and support their software with the latest emerging technologies to “meet or beat” competition.

2.) Membership in the DMSC has proven to help produce good quality products. For example, over the years many companies have invested a great deal of money and time in developing, supporting, and implementing the DMIS standard, and that investment has paid off. DMIS is the most widely used metrology standard in the world. There are countless DMIS programs which, because they conform to the standard, are interchangeable between divisions, joint efforts, and subcontractors. Software vendors have also supported the development of DMIS because of their many customers who use DMIS. But, we cannot just stop, sit back, and rest on that success. Technology is advancing and we must advance with it.

3.) New technologies and standards are emerging in Quality Assurance on every level, and we must keep “on top of them.” That is part of what supporting the DMSC does. We are not only “on top of” these technologies, but we are participating and influencing the development of these new technologies and standards in ways that benefit our member companies. Software vendors are especially sensitive to the needs of this situation.

4.) It is not very difficult, although it is very time consuming, to do a return-on-investment (ROI) to show the benefits of all Quality Assurance efforts. Say that just one single part that costs many thousands of dollars to machine is returned because it is out of tolerance, or worse, not up to some specifications that have recently become part of a metrology standard – not included in the product you use. Participation in the DMSC, Inc. 2 would most likely have provided a heads up about this specification. If the cost to rework that part costs, say twenty thousand dollars, ROI for the yearly dues of DMSC membership is justified ten times over. (We know of one single jet engine air intake rim part that costs fifty thousand dollars to re-machine.)

5.) There is no need to justify Quality Assurance to anyone. But there might be a need for a reminder that such activities influencing standards that directly affect your company, maintaining a company presence, supporting your corporate image, and networking with leaders in your industry can be just as important as getting a good quality products developed and good quality products shipped NOW – especially since a company must develop good quality software products or manufacture good quality parts continuously to stay in business.

6.) Many top-level managers and Vice Presidents have seen the importance and the value of the DMIS standard, the benefit of investing time and money in implementing the standard, in the new technologies that are being incorporating into the standard on a continuing basis, and in supporting the organization that created the standard. There is clearly some significance that these executives view as important to their company.

7.) In reviewing the list of benefits to membership in this standards consortium, it would be possible to assign a dollar value to each of them. Most of those dollar values would be in savings, which in effect is money earned since it is not lost. Other benefits would be money directly earned, such as software products that become more valuable with increased capabilities from including new and emerging technologies. That is the job of Quality Assurance: To make a part right, and to know that it is right every time using the best technology available. That, is worth a Lot of money! And, that is what the DMSC is all about – bringing together new and emerging technologies and developments, coordinated under one organization, that will keep our member companies at the leading edge of the industry.

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