# Statistical Tolerance Analysis--A Survey on Awareness, Use and Need in German Industry
## 8 Conclusions and Recommendations  
The survey reveals that tolerance engineering is not implemented as a matter of course among German companies. So, the systematic and reliable introduction of statistical tolerance analyses to existing development processes was found only in the minority of these companies. This may seem discouraging. However, the survey clearly proved the participants' high awareness of the effects of deviations and tolerances on the aesthetic quality and/or the functionality of their products. This goes hand in hand with a strong motivation of the participants to expand their knowledge and enhance their skills in proper tolerancing. Furthermore, they felt encouraged by successful applications of statistical tolerance analyses to strive for the installation of holistic tolerance engineering in their companies' philosophies and people's mindsets. However, despite all the achievements in industrial practice and among academics, dealing with deviations and tolerances is still a tiresome and unpleasant task, which usually receives insufficient attention. Sadly, in recent past decades, little has changed in the reputation and image of tolerance engineering. Moreover, this is despite the fact that over the last 30 years, engineering design has dramatically changed-from hand-drawn technical drawings to the introduction of 3D-CAD and the progressing digitalization of processes in the context of Industry 4.0. Pessimists could claim that the discipline of tolerance engineering and its community of researchers and industrial experts have been missing developments and trends and have thus continually lost contact with millions of engineers in companies worldwide. However, it is too easy to simply blame the tolerance community. Rather, there seems to be a deep-seated, fundamental issue that outweighs all of the barriers mentioned herein and leads to the fact that tolerance engineering has always been negatively burdened across disciplines and hierarchies. The survey puts us on the right track, as one aspect is recurring throughout the survey results--the enormous complexity and extremely high scope of methods, tools as well as the ISO GPS standards. The tolerance community currently finds itself in a dilemma, henceforth referred to as the \"dilemma of complexity and user-friendliness\", forcing the community to choose between two (equally unpleasant) approaches, to strive for a framework on tolerance engineering that is either of the following:  
* Holistic and universal (precise and detailed, but complex and not user-friendly);
* Easily applied and adopted (less complex and more user-friendly, but simplified and ambiguous). It is indisputable (especially when taking into account the scientometric analysis of Seminars and Conferences on CAT in [71]) that the tolerance community has silently chosen to focus on a holistic and universal approach to tolerance engineering. This is not surprising, since academic researchers drive progress in methods and tools as well as the revision of existing standards. These tend to a strong academic ambition for a holistic understanding. However, this has allowed a gap to emerge that is becoming increasingly larger, since the engineers in industry are still struggling with the application of proper tolerance engineering. It is hardly surprising that the ISO GPS standards are met with great reluctance and skepticism due to their immense scope and complexity. The engineers simply lack the time, support, motivation and interest to get involved in such a comprehensive set of standards. Moreover, tolerancing has always been an unpopular discipline among engineers worldwide. It is undisputed that revisions and extensions of the ISO GPS standards lead to a better and more accurate tolerance design. Nevertheless, the primary goal of the tolerance community is that the methods, tools and standards of tolerance engineering are ultimately applied in industrial practice and thus ultimately become a matter of course.