Parts Manufacturing

Quality inspection of manufactured parts ensures products meet specifications and performance requirements. As original equipment manufacturers place increasing demands on their suppliers, AI plays an important role in helping maintain quality while lowering inspection time and costs. Pleora’s AI solutions have been tested and deployed in parts manufacturing systems for automotive (brake and engine components, body and trim, textiles), electronics (component count and placement), and metal fabrication.

Pleora’s AI solutions help consumer goods manufacturers add advanced AI inspection capabilities alongside installed machine vision infrastructure and processes to improve inspection.

In a classic computer vision application, a developer manually tunes an algorithm for a task to be completed. This can require significant customization if products A and B have different thresholds on what is considered an error. Similarly, AI algorithm training has traditionally required multiple time-consuming steps and dedicated coding to input images, label defects, fine-tune detection, and optimize models.

With Pleora’s eBUS AI Studio platform, non-experts can design AI and computer vision plug-in algorithms without needing specialized development skills. Similarly, developers can use the platform to rapidly prototype and test plug-ins, mix computer vision and AI skills, customize open source models, and streamline production deployment.

Parts Manufacturing

AI plug-ins developed in eBUS AI Studio are optimized for Pleora’s AI Gateway edge processing platform. In a production environment, the edge processor intercepts the video and “mimics” the camera, which lets manufacturers evolve towards advanced AI inspection without disrupting installed infrastructure and processes. AI processed data is then sent over GigE Vision to the inspection application, which receives it as if it were still connected directly to the camera. Data can also be used for continuous offline plug-in training.

With a hybrid approach that adds AI capabilities alongside existing, proven machine vision processes, consumer product manufacturers can speed inspection by reducing false-positives that required costly and time-consuming manual secondary inspection. Inspection data can also be used for more comprehensive Industry 4.0 initiatives, with full-factory analytics to help improve processes and support proactive machine maintenance to reduce downtime.

For products requiring further manual inspection, Pleora’s visual inspection system guides operators through manufacturing steps and automatically highlights deviations and quality issues.