Starting Small With AI and Emerging Manufacturing Technology w/ Jarred Knecht

Engineering & simulationKonnectAI

The team developed an AI-based quality inspection software that uses computer vision to automatically inspect products for defects without manual interaction, replacing the need for a veteran inspector's subjective judgment.

“so we said, okay, well, can we use cameras? Can we use vision to do this? And we discovered that we can. And but we said, well, wait, you know, we're in a high mix environment. … So then the team came and said, okay, I think we can maybe use AI for this. Because it has the processing power to look at these images, look and say whether it's good or bad very quickly.”

PrototypingKonnectAIused in-house for about a year

The team developed a prototype of their AI quality inspection software and tested it in their own production facility for approximately one year before expanding to other sites.

“So we ran with that. We developed our prototype software. We used it in-house, in our own production facility for about a year, then we expanded it to 5 other facilities within the ECI. umbrella, so all inspecting different processes, crimping, taping, label placement, all these obscure things that happen.”

ManufacturingKonnectAIno interaction. There's no keyboard. There's no mouse.

The AI system integrates a camera, screen, and Wi-Fi connection into the workflow to automatically identify products and flag defects without adding production time or requiring manual data entry, effectively creating a 'Joe 2.0' inspector.

“So we incorporated division system during our working processes. It's literally a camera, screen, Wi-Fi connection up to the software, you show the item into the camera, and that's all there is to do. There's no menu to call up. There's no system to tell the camera what it is that it's looking at. It looks at it and it knows what it is.”