Inspection gages thread gages, pin gages, micrometers, CMM fixtures, and other precision instruments are the backbone of quality assurance in CNC machining. For an AS9100-certified aerospace supplier like Alva, each gage must be calibrated, traceable, and accounted for at all times. Losing track of a single tool does not just slow production; it can trigger a nonconformance, jeopardize a customer delivery, and create a compliance gap that surfaces at the worst possible moment: during an audit.

Alva’s quality team identified three root challenges driving their gage control problem:

• Manual sign-out led to lost and misplaced tools. Machinists and inspectors would remove gages from storage without logging them properly, or would return them to the wrong location. Recovery often required significant time spent searching the shop floor.

• Tool usage data was written down by hand and then entered into spreadsheets hours or even days later, creating accuracy gaps and making it nearly impossible to produce a clean, real-time audit trail.

• Audit preparation was labor-intensive and stressful. Meeting the traceability and calibration documentation requirements of AS9100 meant hours of manual data gathering before every external audit time that could not be spent on production.