TOKYO – In a factory south of Toyota’s city in Japan, robots have begun to show a percentage of quality inspectors’ paints, as the pandemic accelerates Toyota’s much-vasacked “go-and-see” formula that helped revolutionize mass production in the 20th century. .
Inside Musashi Seimitsu Industry’s car portion factory, a robot arm selects and spins a tapered gear, gently sweeping its teeth to detect surface defects. .
“Inspecting 1,000 items of the same thing day in and day 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.
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 through Japanese brands for decades with almost zealous.
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 barriers in automated plants in a different way.
However, even in Toyota 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.”
Improvements in synthetic intelligence have gone hand in hand with affordable equipment, but also with stricter quality needs in the customer component.
“We are seeing a hole in development between the quality of products manufactured on normal production lines and the quality demanded by our consumers,” Kazutaka Nagaoka, Japan Display’s production director, told Apple and many automakers.
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 idea was to teach the machine to spot the good, rather than the bad, by basing the algorithm on up to 100 perfect or near-perfect units – a modification of the so-called golden 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.
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.
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.
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 plans to automate all production processes for drum sets and toner cartridges at one of its Japanese plants until March 2023.Robots are already performing the most of the processes and, since April, technicians have been tracking the appliances at the factory from their homes. .
“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? For what? “but humans do. We hope they’ll let them out to ask why and how the flaws happen,” he said. “This will allow more people to look for tactics for constant production, which is the purpose of ‘genchi genbutsu’.”
You may choose not to participate at any time in the links contained in those emails. For more information, please see our privacy policy.
You may choose not to participate at any time in the links contained in those emails. For more information, please see our privacy policy.
send us an email
BACK TO THE HOME PAGE
BACK TO THE HOME PAGE
BACK TO THE HOME PAGE
BACK TO THE HOME PAGE
BACK TO THE HOME PAGE
BACK TO THE HOME PAGE