At a factory south of Toyota city in Aichi Prefecture, robots began sharing the paintings of quality inspectors, as the pandemic accelerated the passage of Toyota’s much-scaunted “go-and-see” formula that helped revolutionize mass production in the 20th century.
Inside the Musashi Seimitsu Industry Co Ltd car station, a robot arm selects and rotates a tapered gear, gently sweeping its teeth to detect surface defects. consistent with the team.
“Inspecting 1,000 copies of the same thing day in and day out requires a lot of skill and experience, but it’s not very creative,” Executive Chairman Hiroshi Otsuka told Reuters. “We would like to lose personnel from those tasks. “
Global brands have a long history of robots in production, while leaving the spiny paintings of the location of faults mainly to humans. But social estating measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have led to a rethinking of the plant.
This has encouraged increased use of robots and other quality technologies, adding remote tracking that was already followed before the pandemic.
For a graph of production robot installations, click here.
In Japan, these approaches are a radical replacement for genchi genbutsu, the go-and-see method evolved as a component of Toyota’s production formula and was followed through Japanese brands for decades with almost zeal.
This procedure requires staff to frequently control all facets of the production chain for irregularities, and has made quality control one of the last human delays in automated plants in a different way.
However, even in Toyota Motor Corp itself, when asked about automating more genchi genbutsu procedures, a spokesperson said: “We are still looking for tactics in our production processes, adding automation processes wherever it makes sense.
QUALITY REQUIREMENTS
Innovations in artificial intelligence (AI) have gone hand in hand with increasingly affordable equipment, but also with stricter quality needs from customers. However, automating inspections is a challenge, given the desire to teach robots to identify tens of thousands of imaginable flaws for an express product and apply that learning instantly.
Musashi Seimitsu’s low defect rate of one consistent with 50,000 sets left the company with enough faulty examples to expand an effective AI algorithm.
But one came from Israeli businessman Ran Poliakine, who implemented the artificial intelligence and optical generation he had used in medical diagnostics on the production line.
His concept was to teach the device to detect the good, that the bad, basing the rule set on up to a hundred very better or almost better sets: an amendment to the so-called gold sample.
“If you look at human tissue, you teach a set of rules about what is smart and what is not, and you only have a moment to make the diagnosis,” he said.
Since this advance, the launch of Poliakine, SixAI and Musashi Seimitsu, have created MusashiAI, a joint venture that develops and rents quality robots, a novelty in the field.
Inquiries from automakers, portion suppliers and other corporations in Japan, India, the United States and Europe have quadrupled since March, when the new global coronavirus, Poliakine said.
“COVID-19 has accelerated movement. Everything is now on steroids, because fleeing house displays, remote paintings can paint,” he said.
For a table of the largest users of production robots, click here.
Earlier this year, auto parts manufacturer Marelli, which has an operational headquarters in Japan and Italy, also launched AI quality inspection robots at a factory in Japan, and told Reuters last month that it was looking for AI to play a greater role in quality in the long term. Inspections Years.
Printer manufacturer Ricoh Co Ltd plans to automate all production processes for drum sets and toner cartridges at one of its Japanese plants until March 2023. Robots already perform the most processes and, since April, technicians have been tracking plant equipment. The house.
“Of course, you want to be available to compare and execute responses when disorders arise, but identity and confirmation are responsibilities that we can now carry out from home,” said Kazuhiro Kanno, general manager of Ricoh’s printer production unit.
Musashi Seimitsu might not say when he plans to have his plants fully automated, however, Otsuka said that AI complements, not threatening, the go-and-see system.
“AI doesn’t ask “Why?” However, humans do. We hope to free them to ask why and how defects occur,” he said. “This will allow more people to look for tactics for constant production, which is the goal of genchi genchi genyetsu. “
Shouldn’t quality experts check the quality of robots?
My company does those things!
Maybe the genuine “AI” check here is if they can fake a quality report, as well as the other folks at Kobe Steel, Mitsubishi Motors, Array . . .
AI used for the manufacturer of paper photocopiers.
What about the paperless office?
Artificial intelligence still exists
Good luck, Sep. 1 10:02 JST
Shouldn’t quality experts check the quality of robots?
Programmers and marks this work.
Shouldn’t quality experts check the quality of robots?
Yes, for the first time when robots take care of and beat their supplier.
The maximum or key players in the availability, maintenance and continuous improvement of robots (over their lifetime) are;
1) Maintenance service (first aid, regime store)
2) Engineering branch (technical / improvement / kaizen)
Shouldn’t quality experts check the quality of robots?
That’s what quality robots are o_O