Category: Manufacturing

Become actively responsive with predictive analysis

Posted on by SuperAdmin

Our world today is in the midst of its fifth industrial revolution. It is an era that is pushing the boundaries of science and technology to harness its best possible potential for the benefit of mankind. To have a deeper understanding of what Industry 5.0 is all about and how it is transforming our lives today, we need to delve into what constituted its predecessor – Industry 4.0. The fourth industrial revolution was all about introducing the basics of automation to the world and applying it heavily in the manufacturing space. 4.0 essentially brought together robots and other interconnected devices to execute repetitive and routine tasks that are best done by machines. Industry 4.0, like most other industrial revolutions, was a giant leap for human innovation, but it also brought to the fore, fears about machines replacing humans and this gave rise to a lot of negative sentiments that led to robots and technology being cast as the enemy. Industry 5.0 is dispelling all such notions and showing us how man and robot are not rivals and in fact can work together as partners.

Industry 5.0 takes the founding pillars of 4.0 – automation and efficiency – and adds a human touch to it via artificial intelligence and smart machines. And if Industry 4.0 was all about by automation, then Industry 5.0 will be about a sort of synergy and harmony between humans and machines. Industry 5.0 is constantly demonstrating to us that pairing humans and machines to further utilize human brain power and creativity is the way to go in the future. Take for example Cobots or collaborative robots that are specially designed to share space with humans. They are one of the best examples of Industry 5.0 because they are designed to integrate with humans; a good example of this would be surgery cobots or co-pilot cobots that assist humans to perform highly specialized tasks during surgery and flying respectively.

Another fascinating and remarkable leap made by Industry 5.0 is vision intelligence. At its core, vision intelligence is a subset of artificial intelligence that works towards making computers and machines visually enabled – it very literally is the process of giving machines the very human ability to see. Through vision intelligence, machines can be given the ability to see and process visuals the same way humans do. Computers don’t subjectively react to visuals the way humans do and hence lack decision making capabilities. However, through programming a photo recognition software or cobots and robots, machines can be taught to mimic ­­­human qualities and thus enable us to live enhanced lives.

Vision Intelligence and the Smart Factory

 

A pertinent example of vision intelligence’s uses would be its applications on a factory floor. Manufacturers today have the ability to run smart factory floors with the vast applications of vision intelligence technology. CCTV cameras can be programmed to do much more than just capture moving grainy images, instead, they can be programmed to perform cognitive functions, for e.g., segregating damaged goods from good food produce. Picture hundreds of ears of corn moving on a conveyor belt as workers sort the good ones from the bad as fast as humanly possible. Now imagine a vision-enabled machine aiding human workers to spot the poor-quality corn ears through their AI enabled vision technology. Aiding in quality checks of corn produce is just one of the myriad examples of vision intelligence applications in factories.

CCTV infrastructures can be further adapted to build intelligence into factory designs. A surveillance system at a chemical factory for example can be taught to gauge distance between a worker and a vat of dangerous chemicals, thereby sounding a real-time warning alarm and reducing the risk of industrial accidents. Similarly, vision AI tech can be useful at construction sites where each and every process can be monitored real time and chances of mishaps are thereby reduced.

The human decision-making process is steeped in context and analysis. Our brains interpret visuals, contextualize the situation and make a prediction or decision based on a number of variables. Up until now, machines only had the capacity to perform repetitive pre-programmed tasks because they lacked the ability to see and process visuals. However, with vision intelligence, machines can now observe human patterns and make predictive decisions by learning from the big data they collect, thereby becoming almost-apprentices to workers in factories.

In a factory setup, vision intelligence is thus a game-changing development that can be used to streamline complex processes and aid human beings to perform better.

Role Of AI Vision In Improving Safety Standards In Manufacturing

Posted on by SuperAdmin

Accidents and operational hazards are important concerns in the manufacturing industry. An accident during daily operations can begin with a minor violation, but end up causing severe injuries to the workers involved.

Although health and safety measures at production and manufacturing units have improved a lot over the years, many have still discussed accidents during manufacturing and production. AI Vision-powered manufacturing solutions can lead to immense safety developments in most industries. Artificial Intelligence is a technology that has constantly been growing, making way for new possibilities.

AI Vision plays a vital role in helping manufacturers to prevent accidents, get organized, and enhance the workplace’s safety operations.

Workplace safety is related to many factors. Moreover, their control is complicated by vast territories that are difficult to follow with the human eye. Automated systems analyze the movement of special equipment and workers on the production site, measure the distance between objects and the weight of the lifted loads, analyze employees’ appearance, and much more.

AI Vision Drives Efficiency And Safety 

AI Vision increases the efficiency of the people in a workplace and ensures their safety. Monitoring workers for wearing protective gear is a huge issue to take care of inside a manufacturing plant. With AI Vision at work, even minor violations like taking off a helmet or gloves are reported in real-time. This automation of detection enables the manufacturers to minimize the risk of accidents that can take place while improving operational efficiency.

While not wearing protective equipment such as a helmet, mask, or gloves could seem like minor disobedience of protocols, it is the first step leading to any workplace accident. 24/7 automated inspections through cameras can act as supervisors for the workplace’s people. With more focus on the safety of the employees and constant supervising, the efficiency of work done gradually increases. 

Moreover, there are several other benefits of including AI Vision in a workplace, these include:

Smart Maintenance

A single equipment failure can result in hours of downtime and repair costs during manufacturing. AI Vision can recognize the imperfections of products on a production line with accuracy and speed. This lowers the cost of quality controls and eliminates waste to optimize the process of manufacturing.

On-Premise Security

As we stated earlier, AI Vision can be beneficial in reducing accidents in the workplace. Other than that, it could be used to monitor the flow of people in industrial sites, warehouses, and other manufacturing units. Entry of unauthorized personnel can be restricted to specific areas with facial recognition in real-time. AI Vision can detect potentially dangerous situations for workers while controlling the access of vehicles and people in the manufacturing unit.

Anomaly Detection

AI Vision can also help you to ensure smooth functioning with Anomaly detection. It can identify unexpected events, technical glitches with its data analysis technique. Anomaly Detection will help you fix those parts that have bad conditions in the production chain by which the manufacturing costs could be reduced.

Predictive Maintenance

Malfunctioning parts or equipment breakdown leads directly to stoppage in the work structure. Businesses that rely on physical components need to do constant maintenance of machinery. With AI Vision, you can optimize equipment usage with a better understanding of its lifetime andnreduced performance. This won’t only save a lot of time, but also a lot of cost reduction would take place if one knows about the condition of machinery beforehand.

Quality Control

With AI Vision, you could easily control the finished product’s quality and the complete production process. Defects in finished products also mean that the production process lacks the needed accuracy. AI Vision can detect a failure during the production process to ensure the quality of produced goods and recommend options to correct the errors made during the production process. It can also analyze employees’ work during the production process and report if they are not adapting correct actions.

AI Vision eliminates the human factor and errors, providing a 24/7 data analysis and surveillance, which results in the production and manufacturing processes becoming more efficient and safer for the employees at the workplace.

About Cogniphi

Cogniphi is a technology company that focuses on building next-generation vision intelligence solutions that are outcome-driven and seamlessly integrate into the existing infrastructure. Cogniphi’s AI Vision is a platform that’s built to improve operational efficiency at every level of an organization, across industries and sectors.

If you’re wondering how Cogniphi’s AI Vision can help you transform your business, get in touch with us for a free demo!

How AI Vision Will Transform the Future of Manufacturing

Posted on by SuperAdmin

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.

SLIP, TRIP, FALL – Four-letter problems with a 4-letter solution

Posted on by SuperAdmin

One of the leading causes of workplace injuries is STF – an abbreviation for the three dreaded words, namely Slip, Trip, and Fall. In Australia, there are more deaths from Slips, Trips, and Falls than there are from fires. In the USA, more than 2000 people need emergency medical care after a slip and fall accident every day, the medical bills for which can often run into astronomical figures of USD 30,000 per case. On an average, 11 working days are also lost as a result of slip and fall injuries. Hence, it is no wonder that insurance claims for incidents involving STF run into billions.

Most STF cases are caused by a lack of active monitoring and shortcomings in safety practices. In fact, negligence is identified as the main reason for STFs and proving it is the easiest route for an accident victim to claim compensation. It is now acknowledged that Slip and Fall accidents are a public health problem because they are so common and costly.

Many slip and fall accidents are preventable and several nations have guidelines for employers to keep workplaces safe and minimize the chances of accidents. If businesses and individuals take the initiative to keep their property safe for customers, other guests, and employees, then they can take preemptive action and prevent these accidents before they happen.

This is where AIVI (Vision enabled Artificial Intelligence) can play a leading role.  AIVI is a technology platform developed by AI experts Cogniphi; it enables an easy and practical solution that can help to continuously track, monitor, and send out real-time alerts whenever there are any shortcomings in safety practices at work places. Be it a poorly lit corner or a slippery surface or a poorly maintained walkway and badly stacked goods, AIVI technology can detect these problems and flag them before disaster strikes.

The AIVI Artificial Intelligence software, which harnesses the power of Computer Vision and Data-driven Learning, works with existing or newly installed camera hardware to detect anomalies in a series of existing conditions and practices followed at retail outlets, factory floors, gas stations, hospitals, nightclubs, or any other workplace. Through its Machine Learning capability, AIVI filters approved conditions and keeps updating itself so as to fine tune its algorithms for pattern recognition and become a literal third eye that warns you of inadequacies in real-time. Solutions deployed can also be taught to learn new patterns and anomalies, and adapt to varying needs as well as build predictive systems.

Even in cases where a Slip, Trip, and Fall does happen in a situation monitored by an AI-enabled video, the instant detection of a Fall can be rapidly relayed to the authorities concerned and illicit a quick response instead of delayed medical care. Timely handling of an STF injury can lead to lesser damage for the person and company.

Talk to Cogniphi and get a further feel of how Vision Intelligence can predict and prevent STF accidents and save your business immense loss caused by Negligence.

Industry 5.0: Vision Intelligence in the new-age Smart Factory

Posted on by SuperAdmin

Our world today is in the midst of its fifth industrial revolution. It is an era that is pushing the boundaries of science and technology to harness its best possible potential for the benefit of mankind. To have a deeper understanding of what Industry 5.0 is all about and how it is transforming our lives today, we need to delve into what constituted its predecessor – Industry 4.0. The fourth industrial revolution was all about introducing the basics of automation to the world and applying it heavily in the manufacturing space. 4.0 essentially brought together robots and other interconnected devices to execute repetitive and routine tasks that are best done by machines. Industry 4.0, like most other industrial revolutions, was a giant leap for human innovation, but it also brought to the fore, fears about machines replacing humans and this gave rise to a lot of negative sentiments that led to robots and technology being cast as the enemy. Industry 5.0 is dispelling all such notions and showing us how man and robot are not rivals and in fact can work together as partners.

Industry 5.0 takes the founding pillars of 4.0 – automation and efficiency – and adds a human touch to it via artificial intelligence and smart machines. And if Industry 4.0 was all about by automation, then Industry 5.0 will be about a sort of synergy and harmony between humans and machines. Industry 5.0 is constantly demonstrating to us that pairing humans and machines to further utilize human brain power and creativity is the way to go in the future. Take for example Cobots or collaborative robots that are specially designed to share space with humans. They are one of the best examples of Industry 5.0 because they are designed to integrate with humans; a good example of this would be surgery cobots or co-pilot cobots that assist humans to perform highly specialized tasks during surgery and flying respectively.

Another fascinating and remarkable leap made by Industry 5.0 is vision intelligence. At its core, vision intelligence is a subset of artificial intelligence that works towards making computers and machines visually enabled – it very literally is the process of giving machines the very human ability to see. Through vision intelligence, machines can be given the ability to see and process visuals the same way humans do. Computers don’t subjectively react to visuals the way humans do and hence lack decision making capabilities. However, through programming a photo recognition software or cobots and robots, machines can be taught to mimic ­­­human qualities and thus enable us to live enhanced lives.

 

Vision Intelligence and the Smart Factory

 

A pertinent example of vision intelligence’s uses would be its applications on a factory floor. Manufacturers today have the ability to run smart factory floors with the vast applications of vision intelligence technology. CCTV cameras can be programmed to do much more than just capture moving grainy images, instead, they can be programmed to perform cognitive functions, for e.g., segregating damaged goods from good food produce. Picture hundreds of ears of corn moving on a conveyor belt as workers sort the good ones from the bad as fast as humanly possible. Now imagine a vision-enabled machine aiding human workers to spot the poor-quality corn ears through their AI enabled vision technology. Aiding in quality checks of corn produce is just one of the myriad examples of vision intelligence applications in factories.

CCTV infrastructures can be further adapted to build intelligence into factory designs. A surveillance system at a chemical factory for example can be taught to gauge distance between a worker and a vat of dangerous chemicals, thereby sounding a real-time warning alarm and reducing the risk of industrial accidents. Similarly, vision AI tech can be useful at construction sites where each and every process can be monitored real time and chances of mishaps are thereby reduced.

The human decision-making process is steeped in context and analysis. Our brains interpret visuals, contextualize the situation and make a prediction or decision based on a number of variables. Up until now, machines only had the capacity to perform repetitive pre-programmed tasks because they lacked the ability to see and process visuals. However, with vision intelligence, machines can now observe human patterns and make predictive decisions by learning from the big data they collect, thereby becoming almost-apprentices to workers in factories.

In a factory setup, vision intelligence is thus a game-changing development that can be used to streamline complex processes and aid human beings to perform better.