Control, international trade fair for quality assurance (QA), is ready to go. Industry stakeholders are looking forward to meeting face-to-face in Stuttgart in the four halls 3, 5, 7 and 9. For many companies, this trade event is not only relevant, but has become an indispensable date in the trade fair calendar. This is because QA measures in many industrial and non-industrial sectors have gained unprecedented importance; for example, QA measures make a significant contribution to meeting the production challenges of zero defects, efficiency, resource protection and sustainability. In order to be able to map efficient processes, the current conditions must be known at every point in the process chain. Reliable quality assurance is essential for this. Defective parts can be rejected immediately and are no longer involved in the further production process. In this way, energy and production resources are saved and, in the end, the quality requirement, resource protection and sustainability are taken into account.

The inspection of properties and condition of workpieces and products is essential for production quality. Every manufacturing company uses, to a greater or lesser extent, measures for form and dimensional inspection, object recognition and position determination, presence checks and completeness checks, component inspections inside and out, and surface inspection. Various production-integrated inspection processes, supported by artificial intelligence (AI) technologies, have long since become part of everyday production. The digital transformation process, which can be designed, for example, with X-ray technology, optical 3D systems, measuring devices for fast tactile measurement, as well as with modern software, is widely current. Digital mapping of processes, infrastructure and components has become essential in many areas because virtual worlds are the basis for forecasts and optimization; companies can identify quality problems and their causes more quickly through digitization.

Control 2023 will showcase many further developments in measuring and testing technology, materials testing, analysis equipment, vision technology, image processing, sensor technology, weighing and counting technology, and AI-supported software tools. Highly appreciated by exhibitors and trade visitors alike is the comprehensive presentation of all industry topics from calipers to universal measuring machines. The products and solutions on display during Control include autonomous inspection systems, a wide range of measuring devices, measuring machines and components, length and angle measuring systems, lighting systems, devices and machines for non-destructive testing, laser measuring systems and magnetic field measurements. A wide variety of analytical instruments and equipment and machines for non-destructive testing are represented, as well as radiography equipment and computed tomography systems.

Overall, virtualization, automation, robotics and digital twin technologies can be identified as trends and current market interests. As a result, this year will increasingly see complete testing circuits connected to Factory 4.0, along with data flow management, advanced programming solutions and robot-based measurements. These modern measurement processes ensure greater accuracy, higher productivity and fewer defective parts. This significantly supports manufacturing companies in avoiding scrap and wasting raw materials. One of the most important trends in quality assurance is also making measuring machines easy and intuitive to use. Here, a great deal of attention is paid to the measuring software, which should provide the best possible support for the operator. Another trend is the automation of quality processes using Deep Learning methods for classification tasks.

Do you want to know more? Click here.