When things go off the rails quality professionals start a root cause analysis routine to determine what went wrong and why. 

Work holding fixtures for inspection devices have evolved over time and now have become, in some cases, as complex as the parts they are designed to hold. There was a day when some 1-2-3 blocks, knee blocks, double-sided tape and hot glue were all you needed to fixture parts for measurement on a coordinate measuring machine (CMM). 

You have just finished your R&R study. Everything has gone according to plan and you are feeling quite pleased. Yet there is something off, something wrong. Your R&R percentage is too high. Now what?

If you can’t trust your data, there’s no point analyzing it—that’s why so many quality improvement projects include measurement system analysis, or MSA.

The engineering design process—based closely on the scientific method—is “the set of steps that a designer takes to go from first, identifying a problem or need to, at the end, creating and developing a solution that solves the problem or meets the need.”

If you can’t trust your measurement system, you can’t trust the data it produces.