There was a time when manufacturers thought that “hot test”—a test at the end of the assembly line of a fully functional engine—was the only way to ensure that each unit had been assembled to perform as expected.

A lot has changed during the past 20 years. Manufacturers, from automotive to medical devices and even printer cartridges, today understand that just about anything can be tested during the process of assembly, with the goal to catch defects at the earliest point on the line. But it was with the automotive sector that in-process testing began during the early 1990s.

At that time, Sciemetric was building a reputation in the marketplace for test and measurement equipment and was already known to many of the big automakers. One of those big names was looking for an alternative to the traditional engine hot test. Hot testing was expensive, took up lots of floor space in the plant, was bad for the environment due to emissions, was a very subjective and often ineffective test, and added no value to the product.

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