AI • IOT • NETWORK EDGE

In industries where accuracy is nonnegotiable—like high-precision metal processing—manual quality inspection often falls short. It’s time-consuming, error-prone, and ill-suited to the demands of modern manufacturing. At the same time, companies are pressured to design, build, and ship products free from defects, all while lowering operating costs.

This is a problem Schlote, a classic automotive supplier with very strict customers like Volkswagen and BMW, unfortunately knows all too well. Schlote struggled with costly product quality problems that kept making their way to customers.

The manufacturer faced serious consequences when it failed to detect flaws in its turbocharger production, leading to repeated shipments of defective products to a global automobile maker. Not surprisingly, the customer lost trust in the company, and Schlote faced a serious risk to its reputation.

To overcome these challenges, Schlote turned to Intel partners Bechtle, a leading European IT service provider, and Vivaldi, an AI specialist.

“This problem did not just happen once. It happened twice, three times, four times, and so on,” says Uwe Siegward, CEO and Cofounder of Vivaldi.

Schlote was forced to implement a multi-tiered quality process with its own inspection operators checking each and every turbocharger. In addition, it hired a third-party company to double-check its work at the automaker’s plant. This became very expensive for Schlote.

Manufacturing AI: Technology That Quality Teams Need

Luckily, today’s advanced technologies like manufacturing AI and computer vision can help hardware builders solve these challenges. Real-time AI quality inspection, for example, augments human visual inspection to enable inspection teams to uncover product flaws across the entire supply chain with great speed and accuracy.

Bechtle, Vivaldi, and Intel partnered to deliver the end-to-end defect detection Schlote needed. With extensive industry knowledge and deep expertise, they provide AI quality assurance to some of the largest manufacturers of high-precision metals products.

“You have to find digital solutions to overcome product anomalies. That’s not only a problem of one company, but it’s also a problem for a whole industry,” says Stefen Schweiger, IoT Solutions Business Manager at Bechtle. “Partnering with Vivaldi is a perfect combination which exactly fits our approach in going to market with IoT AI solutions.”

AI Image Recognition Produces Results

The solution—a combination of an Intel^® processor-powered edge server, computer vision cameras, and Vivaldi software—was supplied and serviced by Bechtle. Pictures are sent to the server that runs the Vivaldi AI algorithms with Intel-optimized software that analyzes inspection results.

If there is an anomaly that falls inside the acceptable parameters, then production can continue as normal. But if it is outside of these parameters, the information is sent to a robot that designates the part for manual inspection. From there, the part undergoes human inspection to determine if the AI was correct and close the inspection process as appropriate: approved or rejected.

The deployment enables Schlote to document every detail of the test procedures. Quality managers have constant visibility into inspection data, like which machine a specific part was built on, the list of tests it passed, and the operator who did the final inspection.

As a result, Schlote gained a reliable and scalable inspection solution that no longer needed third-party testing at its customer site—an immense cost savings for the company. And the customer was no longer receiving faulty product, which was crucial to restoring a positive relationship.

With the quality issues resolved, Bechtle’s ongoing services continue to be essential to sustaining overall operations.

“With all the inspection automated, if something happens to the hardware or software, they can’t ship product anymore because the people are not there,” says Schweiger. “That is where you really need to think about the service concept, how you can minimize the downtime of the whole thing.”

AI Quality Assurance Benefits the Entire Supply Chain

Across every market segment digitizing defect detection enables companies to gain new cost efficiencies, increase sustainability, improve customer satisfaction, and stay ahead of the competition.

As the products like Schlote’s turbocharger—and its components—get smaller and more complex, forward-thinking manufacturers will integrate AI and computer vision into their quality inspection processes.

In the end, the entire supply chain achieves better results. “Not only do you improve the efficiency of your own company but also the overall ecosystem,” says Schweiger. “And if you can save money with your supplier, your company, and provide cost benefits to your customer, you have good quality for a good price with correct information at the right time, your overall business running better as well.”

This article was edited by Christina Cardoza, Editorial Director for insight.tech.