The Quality Information Framework (QIF) is a project initiated in 2010 by the Dimensional Metrology Standards Consortium (DMSC is an American Standards Developing Organization) to address metrology interoperability. Specifically, the QIF supports the exchange of metrology-relevant information throughout the product lifecycle from the design stage through manufacturing, inspection, maintenance, and recycling / end-of-life processing. The QIF standard is implemented through a set of XML schemas called "Application Schemas" along with common core "XML schema libraries". Of these schemas, QIF Measurement Resources and QIF Rules are the two application schemas on which this research is focused. QIF Measurement Resources is an application schema developed to provide standard representations of physical measuring tools and components, and can be used to support measurement planning, statistical studies, traceability, etc. The Resources schema was supported by the creation of a new hierarchy of metrology resources in support of the product lifecycle. The QIF Rules schema is under development to provide the language with which manufacturers can define how dimensional measurement equipment is selected for various tasks, and how this equipment is used during the measurement task. The work on QIF Resources has been published in the current ANSI QIF standard, and the work on QIF Rules is under consideration for the next revision of this standard. In addition to the research and development of these schemas, work on upstream CAD models has included the development of a translator to and from the QIF modeling schema. Interoperability and potential information loss in this process are discussed.
