We have all heard the term Industry 4.0. Maybe some even heard that it signifies the beginning of the 4th Industrial Revolution which encompasses new technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence (AI) and cloud- and edge-computing, promising to make our global industry faster, smarter and more sustainable.
“Production Systems stand to become as much as 35% faster
and 30% more efficient through Industry 4.0 capabilities.”
The time is now
Whether we know the term or not, the 4th Industrial Revolution is already changing the way businesses operate and how they compete amongst themselves. Furthermore, according to a KPMG report, 80% of consulted CEOs believe that the COVID-19 crisis accelerated the Industrial Revolution. Which means that now is the time to dive in, ride the disruption wave, gain a competitive edge, and boost efficiency.
The Need
Still, it is sometimes hard to imagine what new technologies can bring to your business. As such, it is easier to use an example to paint a clearer picture. Let’s assume that your company is one of the many complex production facilities which requires high-quality inspections at every stage. In that case, you need:
- Full and continuous visibility of your production line.
- The ability to find even the smallest operational flaw consistently and in real-time.
- A solution that can:
- Adapt product changes.
- Predict quality deviations.
- And adjust processes to prevent:
- costly repairs,
- and the waste of raw materials.
Accordingly, your key enabler technologies will include AI and edge-computing to detect all errors in real-time rather than at later stages when the cost of repairing is higher.
“For many organizations, the cost of quality is as high as
15-20% of annual sales revenue” – American Society for Quality
The Solution
SmartEagle is a product from EVALAN that makes use of AI and computer vision to help manufacturers in several industries to perform faster and more accurate quality inspections. With SmartEagle, visual inspection tasks are automated as close as possible to your data sources, making your intervention much faster, more secure, and less costly.
Visual recognition technology can be coupled with IoT infrastructure to analyze products under multiple conditions and classes (like defects), thus continuously training the system to detect flaws in your production line. Furthermore, it eventually goes as far as making predictions with high accuracy based on the current behavioral pattern by tapping into enormous amounts of unstructured data (e.g., images and videos).
“AI is not susceptible to external factors, making it optimal for tasks
that are susceptible to errors in processes executed by humans.”
The benefits
Some examples of the direct benefit of implementing such an AI with IoT solution are:
- Finding flaws in real-time before they become costly to repair.
- Ensuring that higher quality parts and products are produced at a lower cost using computer vision on the edge.
- Predicting quality deviations and adjusting processes to prevent the waste of raw materials.
- Gaining complete and uninterrupted visibility of the production line.
For more information send us an email to info@evalan.com
