Instrumental’s Discover AI is a powerful tool for engineers performing root cause analysis.  When Instrumental client Puffco wanted to leverage this tool to identify potential manufacturing defects, their complex blind assembly process made collecting the necessary visual data difficult.  Fortunately, Instrumental partners with Creative Electron in such cases, and together our teams developed a high resolution X-ray inspection solution that provided the necessary insight.

• AI analysis sped defect identification
• X-ray imaging provided the needed imaging data
• Project cycle time dropped significantly

Working smarter (or is that intelegnter?)

Instrumental’s case study of the Puffco project is a great example of the power of artificial intelligence in analyzing vast amounts of data in support of root cause analysis.  The engineers at Puffco had a hunch that X-ray could help reveal defects hidden by their blind assembly, but also understood that analyzing the volume of images would be a monumental task, requiring many man-hours and extending the project deadlines.  With Instrumental’s Discover AI doing the heavy lifting, however, their engineers were to review a narrower, more relevant image set to quickly identify the cause of the defect.

Two great tastes that taste great together 

Much like peanut butter and chocolate, AI analysis (amazing!) and high-resolution, real-time X-ray (amazinger!) taste even better when combined to solve complex manufacturing challenges.  In the case of Puffco, it’s clear that neither solution on its own would have done the job.  The AI couldn’t analyze what it couldn’t see, and the X-ray images only become meaningful with analysis.  Like the peanut butter cup,  this combination is destined to become a classic, and a staple of advance manufacturing.

Time is money

It’s true that, had Puffco engineers devoted enough highly skilled human eyeballs to the task, analyzing X-ray images of their assembled product likely would have led them to the root cause of the defect in question.  The issue is, of course, the time and expense of devoting those resources to such a project.  Instead, by incorporating Instrumental’s powerful AI analysis tools combined with Creative Electron’s TruView™ X-ray images, they were able to shorten their project timeline from months to only weeks.

How might the powerful (dare we say tasty) combination of X-ray and AI support your manufacturing and quality efforts?  Please reach out, and we’ll explore the question together.