Use of resonance inspection for process control

A tool for monitoring a part production process using vibrational data regarding parts produced by the part production process, comprising:

• a data store comprising vibrational data for each of a plurality of parts produced by the part production process, wherein the vibrational data includes a frequency response of each of the plurality of parts when excited at a plurality of input frequencies;
• a vibration assessment module operative to access the data store to retrieve the vibrational data, wherein the vibration assessment module is operative to identify a response characteristic from the vibrational data for each of the plurality of parts that is correlated to a process variable of the part production process, monitor the response characteristic over the plurality of parts produced by the part production process to identify a trend in the response characteristic relative to the sequence of production of the plurality of parts, and identify a change in the process variable associated with the trend.