I am curious to see the amount of customers that require the shop that is supplying parts to them retain control charts on shop instrumentation and metrology. Maintaining records and monitoring metrology changes is expensive and time consuming. Is it worth the cost?

Our company runs both SPC and production counts hourly to track the efficency of the company. This keeps the managment in tune with the production floor. Then improvements are made. If your company is not doing this now - it will be later in order to survive.

I agree. Statistical tools are excellent ways of tracking part quality and instrument reliability. I would rather know when to change a insert before I find I need to change it as a result of a bad part.