Will Model-based Definition Accelerate the Inspection Phase in the Manufacturing Process?

Model-Based Definition provides several benefits for communicating between engineering and other downstream stakeholders. Particularly, semantic PMI information included in 3D models benefits both CAM programming and inspection phases. However, the efficiency of generating CAM- and CAI codes automatically according to the semantic PMI information varies due to the compatibility of different systems. This paper focuses on the experiment that we made on inspecting three different parts with the Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM). We compared four different programming methods and found that the efficiency of inspecting depends on the serial size of the parts. The completely automatic CAI-programming method does not necessarily produce the most effective CAI code compared to the competent human programmer. This is notable, especially in large series due to achieved cumulative time savings in the inspection of each part. With small series, fully automatic PMI method and human-assisted automatic PMIfp method provide significant benefits in the inspection process due to time savings in CAI-programming work.