DMIS Strengthens its Management Organization
Press Release

DMIS; the Dimensional Measuring Interface Standard is both an ANSI and ISO standard and is the result of more than two decades of work by committee members from Coordinate Measuring Machine (CMM) users, CMM equipment manufacturers and metrology software developers. DMIS has recently been assigned to Bailey H. Squier and Associates who will act as DMIS Standard Agent. Bailey Squier is one of the founding fathers of the DMIS initiative and for over two decades has actively participated and administrated the DMIS Standard.

In parallel with the transfer of the DMIS copyright to Bailey H. Squier and Associates a newly incorporated, not for profit corporation, has been formed. DMIS Standards Committee, Inc as a non profit company exists to further dimensional measuring standards through committee made up of elected members that are associated with the coordinate metrology community.

The DMIS Standards Committee will publish it activities and promote the DMIS standard on its new web-site www.DMISstandards.org

The current elected company officers are:

Curtis Brown – President (Honeywell FM&T)
Ray Admire - Secretary (Lockheed Martin Missile & Fire Control)
Cory Leland – Treasurer (John Deere)

In addition to its role as Standard Agent Bailey H. Squier and Associates will promote the sale of DMIS manuals and actively promote the standard through regularly scheduled training classes and education seminars.
DMIS allows the portability and interoperability of inspection part programs between CMM software’s and is brand and system independent. In addition DMIS, as a two way communication protocol, allows the programming of CMMs to occur off-line using CAD data for eventual execution on any brand and configuration of CMM.

As the global manufacturing economy has become a realization DMIS is playing a significant role in allowing CMM part program portability; in addition it allows Tier1/Tier2 suppliers to support their customer needs without having to replicate the CMM equipment in use at either end of the supply chain.

In association with NIST (National Institute of Standards) the Standards Committee is currently working towards Conformance Classes to ensure that those vendors incorporating DMIS into their respective products are truly interoperable per the standard. The latest revision of DMIS version 5.0 was approved in December 2004 as an ANSI Standard and ISO certification is expected shortly.

Major manufacturing corporations supporting and contributing to the DMIS Standard include DaimlerChrysler, John Deere, Ford Motor Company, Honeywell, Lockheed Martin, Boeing. Equipment and software suppliers continuing to advance the standard include Brown and Sharpe, LK, Mitutoyo America Corp., Origin International, Sheffield, Carl Zeiss IMT, Wilcox & Associates and Xspect Solutions.

As additional work the DMIS Standards Committee is currently collaborating with NIST to harmonize DMIS with the European I++ initiative. I++ allows for any CMM software to operate on any CMM hardware using a ‘neutral’ controller driver protocol while allowing the CMM hardware supplier to retain metrology integrity of the CMM frame. In combination the DMIS Standard and the I++ Specification allow for the CMM end-user to purchase best-in-class products with ‘plug-in’ interoperability and ensure inspection part program portability both now and in the future. It is currently estimated the lack of interoperability caused by non-DMIS compliant CMMs is costing manufacturing industry hundreds of millions of dollars a year.

The I++ initiative, along with the Dimensional Markup Language (DML) was recently showcased at the Quality Expo in Chicago whereby DMIS inspection part programs were run by 7 different metrology software on 3 CMM brands of hardware (Zeiss, Wenzel and Xspect Solutions) providing for 21 possible configurations of CMM system.

The newly formed companies strengthen the DMIS Standard and ensure the long-term stability and ongoing development of DMIS and its harmonization with other emerging metrology specifications and initiatives while ensuring those marketing products incorporating the standard are in compliance with the standard.

Bailey Squier
Standards Agent for DMIS

The DMIS National Standards Committee was established in the mid-1980s, and has worked persistently to identify and produce the most complete and precise metrology standard in existence today.

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