NDT aided production

Production/Process Integrated Non Destructive Testing (NDT) Systems are increasingly becoming a part of automated production environments. This is being driven by a combination of low cost and higher quality requirements. Integrated process and condition monitoring by NDT is an accepted procedure for early diagnosis of irregular process conditions followed by feed back control and optimization. Market Research has forecasted that these process-integrated NDT systems will record double-digit growth rates over the coming years. The paper basically describes the requirements of industry and reports on the progress of NDT in this field. The emphasis is mainly on discussing case studies from metal manufacturing and machinery building, i.e. automotive and supplying industries.