A decade ago the manufacturing industry saw a rapid digitization due to the inception of Industry 4.0. Although terms like ‘smart machines’ and “digital revolution” have contributed plenty in mystifying the fourth industrial revolution, the fact of the matter isn’t as beautiful as it sounds.

The manufacturing industry is still ripe with challenges that hinder the production or efficiency of the output. This is certainly true for companies who have either not yet realized the importance of data in the manufacturing process or have tried and failed to gain any valuable insights for the same.

Many companies in the sector at present face challenges in production loss, inventory management, and material wastage, significantly influencing the general yield and productivity of the manufacturing process.

Companies try and fail as they miss out on the most crucial underlying issue – focusing on the “what” of the problem rather than the “why

For instance, a misalignment of factory equipment may not be visible to the manual workforce on the outside. The staff might keep operating it nonetheless at reduced efficiency. This will not only reduce the quality of output but may also pose the risk of aggravating the issue.

That’s where vision intelligence can help.

How Cogniphi’s AI Vision Transforms Manufacturing

AI Vision revolutionizes manufacturing processes with the real-time identification of anomalies and identification of defective production early on in the process, avoiding wastage of resource and time.

This transformative change not only improves the quality of output but also enhances the productivity of the manufacturing process whilst simultaneously reducing the cost of production. With AI Vision, manufacturers can draw more value from their processes without the need to accentuate capital expenditure.

Vision AI isn’t a replacement for your existing surveillance or quality check systems. It’s rather an enhancement to the whole infrastructure, filling the “context hole” in the traditional MES systems.

Not just that, Vision AI also enables manufacturers with predictive and analytical capabilities to enhance day-to-day operations. It helps in predicting faults, breakdowns, and empowers manufacturers with predictive maintenance to eliminate outages or shutdowns saving as much as 20% of loss of time.

All of this takes place with Vision AI in a non-intrusive manner, enabling the production to stay on track while real-time insights are drawn and acted upon.

Moreover, with AI Vision, the factory floors can be administered for compliance adherence, texture anomaly detection, or machine usage. With early detection and proactive detection, manufacturers can easily flag and eliminate compliance breaches early on, avoiding any downstream rejections or stoppages.

The quality of the products can be supervised throughout the production process to ensure it’s on par with the industry standards, eliminating any chance of wastage in the final output.

Looking Ahead: AI Vision & The Future of Manufacturing

There’s very little doubt to the fact that the future of manufacturing will be shaped by AI Vision. Despite the prominence of automation in manufacturing, a lot of work on the assembly line is still carried out manually which might not be necessary as innovation brings enhanced machines to the forefront. The new-age industrial robots will see an upgrade with vision intelligence integrated into their core systems for enhanced attention to detail.

A complete manufacturing unit that’s void of any human presence might still be a distant reality as human supervision is still a need for manufacturing. Vision Intelligence will help the supervisors monitor the production processes with real-time insights on any false positives/negatives, red flags, anomalies, or inefficiencies and inconsistencies. It will make the existing processes ready for the future.

Conclusion

Continuous improvement in the manufacturing process demands visibility which isn’t ideal in traditional surveillance systems. There is a crippling need to upgrade these systems with vision intelligence in order to gather real-time, non-intrusive insights for a proactive production process. Implementing AI Vision will help companies gain vision data, inferences, prediction, productivity, and live view in a simple, comprehensive, and concise dashboard to enable proactive action and continuous improvement.

About Cogniphi

Cogniphi is a technology company that enables customers to achieve transformational outcomes through cognitive digital solutions. It believes in a 360-degree problem-solving approach, building solutions that can scale and adapt to changing business demands for continuous improvement.