Patent ID: 7571070

Claim:
A method of optimizing a fleet of measurement systems, the method comprising: obtaining an application tolerance (T) for each application to which at least one measurement system of the fleet is to be exposed; determining a tool matching precision (TMP) for each measurement system in the fleet for each application to which a measurement system is exposed; and optimizing the fleet by: a) determining a usage weighting factor (w ij ) for each measurement system (i) for each application representative of a time the measurement system (i) spends performing a particular application (j) and calculating at least one usage enforcement rule, b) calculating a weighted fleet measurement precision (FMP) metric for each application to which the fleet is exposed based on the usage weighting factors, the weighted FMP metric equivalent to a root average square of the TMP of each measurement system used for the application and weighted based on the usage weighting factors, c) calculating a normalized FMP metric, the normalized FMP metric equivalent to a root weighted average square of the weighted FMP metric divided by the application tolerance across all applications, d) re-assigning the usage weighting factors to minimize the normalized FMP metric for all applications while enforcing the at least one usage enforcement rule, and e) using the normalized FMP metric to adjust at least one measurement system.