I am happy to launch the new Testia newsletter and welcome you as a subscriber! In this first issue, we focus on automation and how it shapes the future of inspection and structural integrity.

I know that automation is a topic that many people who I have talked to think about a lot. It has such great potential for our industry that still remains to be unlocked in many areas. I notice this on many occasions. For example, when I recently visited a maintenance site of one of our partners, I was astonished by the sheer amount of rotor blades that are stored there. When I asked about it, the site manager told me that they need this large stock, because the manual inspection process of each blade takes so long. As soon as they find a defect, they need to send it back to the supplier for additional inspection and repair or replacement, adding even more time to the maintenance process. Thanks to this insight I realized that high inspection volume is not only an issue in production, as I thought before, but also in certain maintenance scenarios. And since Testia already designed many automated inspection systems, I immediately saw the potential improvements that automation has to offer for this specific maintenance site.

But this was only one of many instances where I could see the promising potential directly myself. I am in general quite excited by the possibilities that automation offers to our industry – both to the business side and to our individual work experiences. Most of the quality escapes we see are linked to human factors, for various reasons. Improved reliability is one aspect that we can address with automation, another important one is cost effectiveness: we are still extremely dependent on manual labour when it comes to inspection. This bears significant costs to elementary parts, well above 10 % of the costs per unit in some cases! Automation can provide a great support for the inspection staff – both in terms of assistance for enhanced reliability and also to mitigate the workforce shortages we witnessed in recent years.

Of course, as with any major paradigm shift, automation brings up both hope and concern. And we will shed light on both perspectives in the following articles of our newsletter. The more regulated an industry is, aerospace or defense for example, the more discouraged we sometimes are to implement changes. However, I like to embrace the new and hope that we can shift this mindset: let's follow a step-by-step approach towards more automation, where it makes sense. We can already achieve great results with options available today, like assistive technologies or machine learning – there are 50 shades of automation, with a broad spectrum of opportunities! We will not replace people or processes, but enhance and assist. And we at Testia with our comprehensive experience, our products and services can support you in mastering these changes accordingly!

Some of our experts share their views on automation in this newsletter, because we care about supporting our customers and partners with what our great team has to offer. In this issue, you find insights on the perspective of an inspector about automation, information about a new ultrasonic cobotized inspection system and an article about how Testia can help with automation.

Now, without further ado I hope you enjoy reading!

David Rottembourg,

Testia CEO