Ever since our company’s founders started their research on visual real-time industrial measurement with analogue cameras, and all through the development of our first fully digital 100% in-line inspection systems, we at Mapvision have had a strong vision about the future of manufacturing.
Vision Becomes Reality
While the first camera-based quality systems were not very advanced by today’s standards, the image of what the future would be like was always clear to us: visual quality data that could be used to guide factories. Fast, precise and reliable measurements for continuous improvement and industry automation in real time. We were supporting environment-friendly and energy-efficient manufacturing before anyone even knew those words!
In the early days, that future sometimes felt distant (mind you, this was decades before lean manufacturing, IoT and AI) and was only shared by a few enthusiastic visionaries, but it today has a name that is on the lips of all builders of connected plants around the world.
The future we have always envisioned is called Industry 4.0.
Made to Measure, Inspect and Analyze
Today, we focus on solutions that use fully digital multi-camera technology for 100% in-line inspection. We help our customers reduce waste and optimize production quality of complex parts, such as structural car body and chassis components.
We are collecting huge amounts of visual production data with the Mapvision Q Series inspection products and can offer unique manufacturing analytics services for the automotive industry. With our real-time data, you can already anticipate production flaws and correct errors without delay.
We have come a long way and have learned a lot about modern manufacturing, production performance improvement and quality culture.
But this is just the starting point. We are planning to do so much more.
Next: Data-Driven Production
So, we have industry-leading measurement capabilities and visual inspection data we can analyze. Great. Now, let’s put the data to work. The next chapter in the Mapvision story is about data that drives factories.
We see robots that get real-time feedback about their work, we see visual inspection information delivered continuously to operators and factory management, from the shop floor to the top floor. We picture a future where real-time quality data flows through connected machines and connected manufacturing lines. We see digitally integrated production systems and self-adjusting factories.
The future of Mapvision is about data-driven manufacturing and smart factories that optimize production based on visual real-time quality analytics. We call it Visual Agile Manufacturing. It is a complex networked world, but we believe our solutions will make it simpler.
The Eyes of Smart Factories
At Mapvision, we enable smart manufacturing through real-time quality analytics and big data to reduce waste, increase business value, and minimize environmental footprint.
The current competing solutions are rigid and unable to gather data for complex parts fast enough to provide detailed visibility in real-time, which means that they cannot answer to the new requirements, which Industry 4.0 and flexible manufacturing set for inspection systems of the future.
Given that the Mapvision inspection technology is fast and completely digital, Mapvision is in a unique position to create a quality inspection and measurement solution that can be integrated into flexible manufacturing cells. This allows agile production changes and the use of the cells for multiple components without downtime, increasing utilization rates significantly. This is a huge growth opportunity for Mapvision.
When totally automated, the factories can operate in complete darkness without any human intervention at the premises. A key enabler of this change will be Mapvision’s camera-based inspection systems.
We will be the eyes of smart factories.
Join Our Journey!
At Mapvision, the paradigm shift towards flexible manufacturing enabled by digital eyes is already happening. We are all excited about enabling the factory of the future.
With Mapvision Absolute Measurement, we have introduced CMM-free quality inspection. It enables manufacturers to perform absolute in-line measurement. For the first time, quality inspection becomes fully digital!
Next in line (please excuse the pun, it was too hard to resist for a person working full time with automotive production lines) will be weld seam inspection functionality that uses neural networks and deep learning to add weld seam anomaly detection as a software upgrade to the Mapvision Q Series inspection solution.
We are now also piloting Mapvision Smart Eye Cell that applies our advanced multi-camera technology to a totally new hardware format that will be the focal point of a flexible welding cell.
The future production facilities will be a network of flexible cells that can operate automatically based on closed feedback loops. When you replace rigid and underutilized manufacturing lines with a network of these cells, you not only get huge floor space savings, but you will also have a factory that can adjust according to the changes in production requirements and volumes.
More information about Mapvision Smart Eye Cell solution will follow later as we collect experience about the solution with our welding cell pilot in a real production environment.
If you, too, are interested in building production lines that adapt automatically and improve continuously based on visual quality data, please get in touch. We have ambitious growth plans, but we can’t realize our vision alone.
We invite you to join us on our journey towards visual agile manufacturing.
