But it is anything but that - it is a strategic issue. In quality management in particular, it determines whether a plant remains flexible, audit-proof and innovative in the long term - or whether it becomes silently and expensively entrenched in dependencies.
A typical pattern looks like this: Tools from the manufacturer, test bench from the same manufacturer, evaluation software also from the same manufacturer. Sounds convenient because everything comes from a single source. In the short term, this saves integration costs, but in the long term it creates a hard vendor lock-in.
The problem starts with flexibility. As soon as new features are required - new analysis procedures, new AI methods or new forms of reporting - you are dependent on the roadmap pace of precisely this manufacturer. If the feature does not exist, there is no alternative. Replacing individual components becomes expensive or impossible because data formats, interfaces and logics are proprietary.
The second point is negotiating power. If you bundle the entire chain with one provider, you effectively lose it. Prices for licenses, services and extensions are then no longer determined by competition, but by the existing portfolio. Technical dependency quickly becomes economic dependency.
The third point is data sovereignty. If measurement, evaluation and interpretation come from the same ecosystem, the independent second view is often missing. A good QMS strategy separates collection, storage and evaluation. Raw data must be open, traceable and usable in the long term. Quality needs reproducibility - not just status indicators.
Another, often underestimated aspect: data should not be "co-managed" by the hardware manufacturer, but by a strong, specialized software partner. Hardware companies build good devices. Software companies build good data platforms. Both are rarely excellent at the same time. If you want to use quality data strategically, you should have it transferred to a vendor-neutral software layer that is built precisely for this purpose: Integration, normalization, plausibility checks, long-term archiving and cross-manufacturer evaluation.
What makes sense instead:
Manufacturer independence does not mean that complete solutions can no longer be used. But they must be integrated in such a way that they remain replaceable. Architecture before product. Data model before tool. Interface before convenience.
Vendor independence is no longer a "nice to have". It is a prerequisite for reliable quality, genuine innovation and healthy negotiating power. Manufacturers can be partners - but never the only option.