Rising inflation, material costs, and supply chain volatility are making growth extremely sluggish for the manufacturing sector. As businesses look to keep pace with market trends and respond quickly to customer demands, labor shortages and a legacy tech ecosystem act as the biggest roadblocks. 

With so much turmoil, how can firms drive industrial optimization? How can they optimize production, profitability, and growth? How can they differentiate themselves from the competition and gain market share and brand recognition? How can they deliver on the promises of Kaizen and Six Sigma? How can they build a culture of continuous improvement? 

Manual Approaches to Industrial Engineering Can Have Sub-Optimal Consequences 

The rapidly changing industrial landscape has made business operations extremely challenging for manufacturing firms. Whether in auto parts fabrication or medical device manufacturing, managing resources, integrating technology, and dealing with sustainability concerns take up a lot of time and effort. When done manually, these activities can delay production while impacting quality and time-to-market. 

Let’s take an example. Suppose a production line produces 1000 SKUs per hour. How can this be increased to 1200 SKUs/hour? Typically, experts would look at each sub-task very minutely, including the time it takes. Then, they would come up with an analysis of how different tasks can be improved, how the workforce can be optimized, what tools should be used, and more. 

Such an approach, although beneficial, is extremely slow, inaccurate, and effort-intensive when carried out by expert humans. Although it can still be done for smaller organizations with a limited number of SKUs, this manual approach is not feasible for larger companies. With a million parts moving every single day, it is humanly impossible to keep an eye on every aspect of the production environment. 

• Manually tracking inventory, managing invoices, and shipping finished goods can take a toll on workforce productivity, leading to errors and undetected revenue leakage. 
• It can lead to poor product quality, high costs, and a gradual decline in operational efficiency. 
• In the long run, this is bound to impact employee productivity and customer satisfaction levels while also causing high amounts of customer churn. 

Revolutionizing Industrial Engineering with Computer Vision

If you want to save costs, avoid customer churn, enhance employee productivity, and boost overall operational efficiency, you need to exploit the capabilities of computer vision-based analytics. Investing in tech-enabled solutions that have computer vision at their foundation is a great way to overcome the growing list of engineering challenges. 

Via intelligent automation, computer vision can help: 

Automate Business Operations

For mid- to large-sized manufacturing firms, computer vision technology helps automate critical business operations. By extending camera technologies to see, perceive, measure, and make reliable sense of objects, alignments, and more, firms can pave the way for comprehensive and intelligent AI-led automation. 

Improve Workforce Safety

The shopfloor is an extremely risky place for humans to operate in. With a high probability of accidents, computer vision can help safeguard workforce safety and health. Through timely and accurate object (and employee) identification, firms can promptly alert employees of risks, thus ensuring their safety. The technology can also help in ensuring compliance with evolving workplace safety regulations such as OSHA and EHS. 

Streamline Supply Chain Activities

When it comes to managing and optimizing the supply chain, computer vision can offer several benefits. For example, through precise barcode scanning and package dimensioning, the technology can help supply chain managers efficiently track the movement of inventory and ensure timely dispatch. This can help shorten the order-to-delivery process while minimizing the chances of an inventory shortage (or surplus).

Minimize Costs

Manufacturing firms find themselves dealing with escalating shipping costs due to inaccurate volumetric dimensions of packages. In addition, they witness a high volume of waste due to improper handling of perishable goods. With computer vision, all these costs can be greatly reduced. By offering real-time visibility into raw materials and finished goods across the supply chain, computer vision can curtail unnecessary costs while improving quality and delivery. 

Tackle Challenges with Ease with KamerAI

Revenue leakage is a growing concern for manufacturing organizations. Whether through wastage, poor quality of products, or delayed delivery, leakage happens at every stage of the manufacturing and fulfillment lifecycle. If you want to sustain your revenue while meeting all your business objectives, you need to minimize manual intervention. 

Not only are manual approaches costly and time-consuming, but they are also a major cause of industrial blunders. In the Industry 5.0 era, computer vision technology delivers the right solution to growing engineering challenges. From automation to workforce safety, supply chain optimization to cost reduction – computer vision can improve human-machine collaboration and completely transform the industrial engineering landscape. 

At KamerAI, we have computer vision integrated into the very core of our platform. Vetted by industrial experts, our solutions are specifically curated for computer vision-based analytics and industrial automation. With KamerAI, you can infuse large volumes of visual data with analytics, automation, and autonomization and improve decision-making across your business. Explore our offerings today to see and understand the manufacturing world around you!