International Institute of Geometric Dimensioning & Tolerancing

IIGDT Consulting Services To request information regarding consulting services, Dr. Greg Hetland has developed a unified approach to bridge the gap between Design, Manufacturing and Metrology. The bottom-line goal is to build upon the concept of proper Design and Intent to improve your cost of business through greater efficiency in engineering, manufacturing, and improved quality. Design Review... Dr. Hetland has built a reputation identifying areas of improvement throughout the design process. Working directly with your engineers who are responsible for the creation or interpretation of the product design can save your organization many hours and dollars in correctly applying GD&T. GD&T is not uniformly taught or applied throughout industry. The Design and Intent of a drawing is typically not properly communicated between the three independent-minded departments consisting of Engineering, Manufacturing and Metrology. Dr. Hetland brings his consulting experience into your organization and builds bridges between these departments to develop communication links. Design Engineers must not only be knowledgeable of the fundamental principles of geometric dimensioning and tolerancing, but also be proficient in advanced applications and analysis. These advanced capabilities are needed in order to apply the proper and optimum symbology to the design parameter and also to apply the correct (as well as optimum) tolerance that clearly reflects design function. Manufacturing Engineers also need the fundamental knowledge to understand clearly what the designer is trying to say by the engineering drawing. To be efficient, they also must have a high level of competency in applications and analysis to establish process controls that will ensure conformance to engineering requirements, but do it at the least amount of cost. One must keep in mind, the engineering drawing should not state how to manufacture or to inspect the product, but should only state in a clear engineering language what it should look like when it is complete. Metrology Engineers, like the manufacturing engineers, need the same broad base of knowledge, except in this case, the metrology engineers need to have a clear understanding of how to approach the dimensional metrology aspects. This is necessary to ensure the product produced in fact conforms to the defined requirements, or more to fact, must understand the true magnitude of product and feature variation. The little time devoted to teaching geometric dimensioning and tolerancing in educational institutions makes all disciplines in the mechanical arena today have a higher negative impact to the financial loss within companies than is necessary. It is also the single most needed focus area for all disciplines for reaching significant gains in today's mechanical industries. Manufacturing... Dr. Hetland has worked in virtually every manufacturing environment throughout the world. This experience brings to your manufacturing department knowledge on spotting areas for improvement in interpreting and applying GD&T. The financial benefits to your business can be realized almost immediately. By just reviewing your manufacturing process with an objective approach to interpreting and applying GD&T, the benefits become obvious: improved quality, reduced expensive rework and satisfied customers. By working directly with your manufacturing personnel, Dr. Hetland first observes the current process to better understand its strengths and weaknesses. Once this evaluation period is completed, Dr. Hetland then develops a target list of areas that could use improvement. These suggested improvements are often based on the Design and Intent of the work piece and will involve consulting with the engineering staff who designed the part. Bringing together these separate departments is just one way to build that communication bridge. Reviewing the manufacturing process can lead to suggestions to change operation sequence, work piece holding and material handling. Often overlooked, but holding the work piece anchored to surfaces that are not members of the Datum Reference Frame can lead to erroneous results. Applying GD&T correctly at the point of manufacture leads to improved cost effectiveness and a better educated workforce. Metrology... Dr. Hetland brings to your organization 30+ years of metrology experience. Tolerances are becoming tighter throughout the world as products evolve into smaller and more complex designs. Maintaining the training level of your Metrologists is as critical to your organization as design and manufacturing. The Metrologist must interpret the correct meaning of GD&T when validating your manufactured products. Understanding how to extract the correct measurement values in practice leads to a sound and reliable understanding if the products meet the Design and Intent of the designer. Metrology is an evolving science. Simple point-to-point and hard gauged practices so widely prevalent in today's inspection departments do not sufficiently explain the question "Is it in spec?" When working on complex components with tolerance being reduced we must now evaluate the product and our process at the same time. Standards such as ASME B89.7, Measurement Uncertainty are just one of the tools in which the Metrologist must be proficient. Dr. Hetland has been instrumental in bringing standards, such as B89.7, into practice in companies throughout the world. Currently Dr. Hetland is the Chairman of the B89.7 Committee and was instrumental in the development of the standard (see Affiliations). In Summary... Every department (Design, Manufacturing and Metrology) influences the success of your company. When each introduces method biases to the process it directly increases the cost of doing business. In order to achieve the greatest return on your investment, each company must integrate common practices that bridge the divide between all departments. Dr. Hetland calls this Business Transformation, a corporate "Way of Life." Understanding Precision GD&T allows everyone involved to have fundamental competencies at all levels to efficiently perform their job and to effectively communicate across departments. With this knowledge equally applied, you have success.