Understanding the importance of AI in the Quality Inspection Process

According to a study published in Quality Digest, experts estimate that the ‘cost of poor quality’ experienced by manufacturing and service companies can be around 5-30% of their gross sales. Suffice to say, this number is high enough to chisel away at a company’s bottom line. Even established brands that strive to adhere to the highest quality standards during every stage of their manufacturing process suffer quality issues.

Defects in manufacturing are a huge issue for the industry. This is why product quality inspections are so important in today’s day and age. Quality control is imperative if you want to build the best possible product for the lowest possible cost.

Now while several traditional quality control methods are being employed regularly by manufacturing companies around the world, none have shown the level of efficiency that artificial intelligence promises to bring to the industry soon.

Gradually but surely AI is becoming an integral part of our modern civilization. It is already being used to reduce traffic congestion, control air pollution, and make our cities a safer place to live. Similarly, it can also be used to perform manufacturing quality checks. Manual inspections can be time-consuming, costly, and very often, extremely dangerous.

Artificial Intelligence, on the other hand, can be used to identify wonky engines, defective parts, missing circuit board components, scratched screens, etc. without any of the problems that are so commonly associated with manual quality inspections. Almost half of all quality checks involve visual confirmation. Cameras, for instance, play a significant role during quality inspection. However, currently, all these cameras do is tell you whether a particular product is a pass or not.

Integrating AI with visual inspection can help you do a lot more with the photos captured by a camera. Manufacturing organizations can use AI to identify defects by matching patterns to images that have already been classified and analyzed. Furthermore, the use of 3D techniques can even help you learn how severe a particular defect is.

AI can quickly learn how to identify defects accurately by simply referring to a few sample images and audio files. AI is also constantly evolving. So you can expect it to proactively get smarter and better-suited to accurately identify defects as time passes by.

A typical inspection procedure will involve the following three steps:

• Pre-Production Inspection: In the initial stage, the inspector takes a few samples and examines them to make sure the raw materials meet certain established quality standards.
• In-Process Inspection: During this stage, the first product that got out of line is checked for conformity. If any issues are detected during the inspection, the factory has to immediately take appropriate corrective actions to make sure there are no delays.
• Final Inspection: This quality inspection takes place when the product is finished and ready for shipment. At this stage, samples of finished products are randomly drawn and the total quantity of products is counted.

DT4o is a leading quality inspection company that offers AI-assisted quality inspection services that overcome the challenges posed by traditional inspection procedures. Our AI-powered Computer Vision-based inspection system is capable of automating the entire quality defect detection process. We leverage camera brand-agnostic solutions that provide your manufacturing company with quality control that features reactive and predictive analytical capabilities.

DT4o’s intuitive solution can continuously monitor production lines in real-time to accurately detect defects and report them immediately for a quick fix. With our AI-powered solution, DT4o can help your company boost its ROI by eliminating rework, scrap and significantly reducing quality inspection costs.

There are very few companies out there that make use of AI like DT4o does to boost the efficiency of product quality inspections.

You can learn more about our services by exploring our official website or directly contacting our representative.