MACHINING & MACHINERY
THE POISONED APPLE EFFECT
INSPEKTO
BREAKING THE CHAINS OF
TRADITIONAL MACHINE VISION
In Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the
jealous stepmother of the protagonist
orders the title character to be killed. Snow
White escapes and is later discovered
hiding in the seven dwarfs’ cottage. To
further her evil agenda, the stepmother
disguises herself as a hag to deliver a
poisoned apple, which causes Snow White
to fall into a deathlike sleep that can only
be broken by a kiss from a prince. Here
Harel Boren, CEO of Inspekto, founder of
Autonomous Machine Vision, explains how
manufacturers and their QA managers can
ensure their QA story has a happy ending,
just like Snow White’s.
For decades, manufacturers have been
the damsel in distress in a much more
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expensive story; the integration of
Traditional Machine Vision. In this tale,
visual Quality Assurance (QA), gating and
sorting has always been the necessary evil,
helping manufacturers reduce the risk of
defective products. The process begins
with the manufacturer identifying a need
for QA and assessing whether a certain
point on the production line is worth the
time, effort and cost of implementing a
machine vision solution.
If it is, the manufacturer will then
appoint a systems integrator to put
together a QA solution for critical points
on the production line. This is because
implementing a Traditional Machine
Vision solution requires a long process
of planning, design and commissioning.
This lengthy procedure requires preparing
Proof of Concepts, tedious test plans
and development of the final applicable
solution. To build that inspection solution,
the appointed integrator is required to
choose an array of lighting, cameras, lenses
and other components.
Once a solution has been defined, the
integrator will then install it during a
period of production downtime - an
additional cost for the manufacturer. After
all this work, you’d expect a consistent and
trustworthy, reliable solution, equipped
to deal with the challenges of the future.
You’d be wrong. What many QA managers
discover is that what they’ve actually been
given is a poisoned apple.