AddQual
Ben Anderson, Founder & Managing Director of Addqual is revolutionising qualification process.
Developing, manufacturing, and maintaining components for industries like aerospace, power generation, and medical results in rigorous qualification and verification processes. These steps are often hit by inefficiencies resulting in increased scrap costs, bottlenecks, and ultimately product launch delays. Ben Anderson, Founder and Managing Director of AddQual Ltd, noted these challenges as the motivation behind establishing a company focused on innovating the metrology and quality assurance approach.
“I witnessed first-hand the struggles manufacturers faced in reliably qualifying their critical components,” explained Anderson. “There was often a disconnect between the vast amounts of measurement data being generated and the ability to translate that data into confident decisions. The processes were frequently time-consuming, costly, and prone to inconsistencies due to manual interpretation.”
What AddQual has to offer
AddQual helps to streamline and enhance the qualification process for safety-critical components, with a selection of specifically designed services that aim to tackle issues inherent in traditional quality control methodologies. One of the company’s key offerings is its component qualification services that captures and reports metrology data for parts ranging from 2mm³ to 2m³.
Anderson said, “OEMs and MROs in safety-critical industries often grapple with unclear or incomplete inspection requirements. This can lead to significant delays and costly rework. AddQual steps in to partner closely with customers, helping them clarify and refine their metrology requirements, ensuring precise alignment with stringent safety and quality standards.”
By integrating dimensional metrology systems, AddQual provides an autonomous approach to inspection. The company also provides production inspection solutions to help with the management of the large volume of metrology and quality control data that manufacturers can be overwhelmed with.
Anderson elaborates, “Companies are drowning in data yet struggling to extract meaningful insights. Our production inspection services leverage metrology and fixturing expertise, automation, and data management software to optimise process outputs. This moves manufacturers away from relying on engineers' subjective interpretation and towards a structured, automated approach.”
Finally, AddQual addresses the need for CI (Continuous Improvement) Investigations. Understanding the root cause of inconsistencies or failures is important, requiring detailed and reliable data.
“Many manufacturers still rely on paper-based systems and human-driven decision-making processes, which can lead to inconsistent decision-making and inefficiencies,” said Anderson. “AddQual provides the structured metrology data necessary for thorough CI investigations, enabling manufacturers to identify and rectify issues quickly and effectively.”
Ensuring reliable data interpretation
Systematically capturing detailed metrology data with advanced 3D structured light metrology techniques and other metrology systems like CMMs, callipers, micrometres and hand gauges within its NADCAP-accredited processes, helps to ensure that data is reliable.
The fragmentation of data across various systems makes these issues more challenging. By storing information in isolated formats can led to problems with integration, resulting in manual interpretation. This, in turn, will slow down decision-making while also increasing the risk of human error. With AddQual's approach, users receive a platform for traceable, structured data, which helps to transform raw measurement data into structured insights, speeding up decision making.
“Our fundamental aim is to automate the decision-making process in quality control,” concludes Anderson. “By providing structured insights that instantly classify parts, we remove variability and enable manufacturers to react in real-time. AddQual exists to help companies move beyond simply collecting numbers and start leveraging structured metrology to drive automation, process improvement, and ultimately, safer and more reliable products.”
