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By Reuters
TOKYO – In a factory south of the city of Toyota, Japan, robots have begun to share the paintings of quality inspectors, as the pandemic accelerates the passage of Toyota’s much-vasacked “go-and-see” formula that helped revolutionize mass production in the 20th century.
Inside the Musashi Seimitsu Industry Co Ltd car parts factory, a robot arm selects and turns a bevel gear, gently sweeping its teeth to detect surface defects. The inspection takes around two seconds, compared to highly skilled workers who check around 1,000 games according to the shift.
“Inspecting 1,000 copies of the same thing day in and out requires a lot of skill and experience, but it’s not very creative,” Chief Executive Hiroshi Otsuka told Reuters. “We’d like to lose staff from those tasks.”
Global brands have long used robots in production, leaving the thorny paints of defect detection mainly to humans. But social estrangement measures to prevent the spread of COVID-19 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 table on production robot installations, click here https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/JAPAN-FACTORIES/yzdvxxnrmvx/
In Japan, such approaches are a radical replacement for the “genchi genbutsu” methodology, “go and see” evolved as a component of Toyota’s production formula and was followed by Japanese brands for decades with almost zeal.
This procedure requires staff to frequently monitor all facets of the production chain for irregularities, and has made quality control one of the last human obstacles in automated plants in a different way.
However, even in Toyota Motor Corp itself, when asked about automating more genchi genchi genbutsu procedures, one spokesman said: “We are still looking for tactics in our production processes, adding automation processes where 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 in the customer component. 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 set of rules on up to a hundred very better or almost better sets, an amendment of the so-called gold sample.
“If you look at human tissue, you teach a set of rules about what’s smart and what isn’t, and you only have a moment to make the diagnosis,” he said.
“ABOUT STEROIDS”
Since this advance, the start-up of Poliakine, SixAI and Musashi Seimitsu, have created MusashiAI, a joint venture that develops and rents quality robots, a novelty in the field.
Consultations from automakers, spare parts 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. It’s all on steroids now, because fleeing house displays, remote paintings can paint,” he said.
For a table of the largest users of production robots, click here https://graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-CORONAVIRUS/JAPAN-FACTORIES/rlgvdonnjpo/
Earlier this year, Italian auto portion manufacturer Marelli, formerly Calsonic Kansei, 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 inspections in the coming years.
Printer maker Ricoh Co Ltd, plans to automate all of the production processes for drum units and toner cartridges at one of its Japan plants by March 2023. Robots perform most of the processes already, and since April, technicians have been monitoring equipment on the factory floor from home.
“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 release 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 purpose of ‘genchi genyetsu’. “
(Information through Naomi Tajitsu and Makiko Yamazaki; Additional information through Maki Shiraki and Noriyuki Hirata; Edited through David Dolan and Christopher Cushing)
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