Claire is a Content Marketing Manager on PTC's Commercial Marketing team. She creates content in support of PTC products and solutions.
With so much at stake for their brand and their global visibility, many automotive manufacturers and suppliers are putting their quality control and inspection challenges in the rear-view mirror with a potent combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and augmented reality (AR) solutions.
Why should you perform manufacturing inspections?
Safety
Ensuring end-user safety is the top priority of any manufacturing inspection. Your customers expect safe, reliable products. Failure to meet those expectations can have catastrophic consequences including costly recalls, brand-damaging headlines, and broken customer trust.
Quality
Some industries face higher stakes and bigger roadblocks when it comes to quality control. At the top of the list is automotive manufacturing. Your product quality is one of the strongest brand signals you can send your current customers and prospective ones about how well you run your business—for better or worse. Avoiding defects with thorough training and quality inspection is critical for any manufacturer concerned with their reputation.
The importance of quality manufacturing inspections
For automotive manufacturers and suppliers, the risk of recalls puts the spotlight on quality control. That’s because the cost of recalls goes beyond finances. The business also risks its reputation and the safety of its employees and customers.
Avoiding costly recalls and reputation damage starts with quality inspectors. The bar is high for skills and competency expectations—but a tight labor market and a growing skills gap make it difficult to find employees with the knowledge and experience necessary to do an effective job.
“Our main priority is to manufacture quality parts with zero defects. We analyze every aspect of the design, process, tools, and equipment to ensure we deliver high quality products to the customer.”
—Vinny Pagano, World Class Manufacturing Manager, Nascote Industries, a division of Magna International
What are inspectors looking for when doing manufacturing inspections?
During visual inspections in manufacturing, frontline workers must spot any defects that could impact the product’s functionality, quality, and safety. Some automotive manufacturers and suppliers need to be on the lookout for soft connections (partially connected electrical plugs that might pass continuity tests but are likely to fall out later).
What role does training play in improving quality inspections?
New employees need comprehensive training to learn about complex vehicles: how they operate, how different components work together, and how they should be inspected. Employees with years (or even decades) of experience need regular refresher training to keep up with evolving technology and new product launches.
One of the most important areas for employee competency is the manufacturing inspection process—the final safety net that catches defects and bad parts when it counts: before the product leaves the facility. And to succeed, quality engineers need best-in-class tools to optimize training and inspections for maximum efficiency and accuracy.
Where do 2D instructions and manual processes break down?
Working with complex products requires reliable instructions. But many automotive manufacturers and suppliers still use paper-based materials that can become easily outdated or misplaced. Work instructions must also be clear and detailed, but paper-based manuals are often missing the context and scale of vehicles. And while they are helpful, the act of consulting 2D instructions represents a moment where attention is removed from the object of those instructions. As employees look down or page through a manual, that represents an opportunity—however small—for mistakes to be made.
How does AR transform work instructions in the automotive industry?
With AI-enhanced visual inspection and AR instructions, automotive manufacturers and suppliers are taking training and quality inspections to the next level. AR transforms training with clear digital content overlaid on the physical product, accelerating comprehension and reducing training costs. This immersive experience empowers frontline workers at every stage of their careers, and AR users find it’s a valuable tool to build and retain knowledge. According to a survey by IDC, 87% of AR adopters agree that the technology addresses their concerns about knowledge loss in their organization. AR also makes the training process more convenient, as AR content can be modified or updated at any time.
Work instructions can also be transformed with AI-enhanced visual inspections. Instead of manually searching equipment for defects or bad parts, AI identifies them automatically and provides the quality engineer with clear pass or fail notifications in AR. At the end of a long inspection process, automated protocoling ensures the engineer doesn’t have to document results manually. AR is an added layer of assurance that your product meets the high standards for quality you share with your customers.
"Of those participants who said knowledge loss is a concern for their company, a whopping 87% believe AR can help their companies address this concern today or in the future."
Source: IDC
Transforming quality control at Nascote Industries
Realizing an opportunity to bring its customers even better quality, Nascote Industries, a division of leading automotive supplier Magna International, started searching for solutions to improve training and inspections. With 2D instructions lacking critical detail and context, Nascote Industries identified a need to support employees with different learning styles and experience levels. AR was the perfect match for the main use cases at Nascote Industries, helping the business realize a competitive edge.
With AR, engineers at Nascote Industries benefit from immersive training content, which employees at any experience level can easily follow. This approach is particularly appealing to visual learners. On the quality side, mobile AI-enhanced visual inspection technology provides clear pass or fail notifications overlaid in AR for faster and more accurate quality inspections. This optimizes quality engineers’ ability to identify defects before a product leaves the facility, which improves brand reputation and customer satisfaction and reduces the costs associated with scrap and rework.
For automotive manufacturers and suppliers, exploring opportunities to improve innovation and quality is critical. Dig deeper into proven outcomes for manufacturing inspections at Nascote Industries and learn how their unique AR strategy created impactful results in the full case study.
Improving Innovation and Quality with Inspections
Explore outcomes of manufacturing inspections using AR
Read the Magna Case Study