When Chick Machine landed a new aerospace contract that required inspection documentation the shop had never produced before, it had little time to overhaul its inspection department and put an end to handwritten inspection reports.

Converting the shop to a digital inspection management system didn’t feel like an option but a necessity. “We have to evolve this capability or we will be left behind,” said Bobby Petrini.

With the new inspection management software, the quality control department was trained to create quality plans in High QA, a new and very different process for some employees. And for many of the machinists on the floor, inspection was no longer paper documentation with risk of inconsistency, errors or missing measurements altogether if a machinist was confident in the part.