CAM-242
A mountain of parts has built up in front of one machine
Afternoon shift in the machining shop. The curved conveyor feeding the machine is packed to the brim with metal casings, stacked and skewed, one on top of another. The signal tower is green: the machine is working, but it cannot keep up. A few metres further on, the roller conveyor that carries the output away is empty end to end. Two operators look at the queue. IRIS counts the parts waiting and the parts coming out.
Turn on IRIS Vision
AI-generated image
What IRIS understands
What it recognises in this scene
- parts piling up in front of the machine
- the machine that sets the pace
- output conveyor running empty
- operator watching the queue grow
- operator at the next station with nothing to do
What this camera measures
An alert says something is happening. The reading says how much.
- 58Parts waiting in front of the machine
- +19Parts added to the queue in twenty minutes
- 2Parts on the output conveyor
- 14 minHow long the queue has been growing
- 5People in shot
The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client's measurement.
The rule
You decide once. IRIS applies it always.
If
the queue in front of the machine goes over forty parts for more than ten minutes
Then
- alert the shop supervisor with the camera and the size of the queue
- show at the same time how many parts leave on the next conveyor
- save the queue curve hour by hour for the whole shift
The instruction that set it up«Count how many parts are waiting in front of this machine and warn me if it goes over forty for more than ten minutes.»
What changes
What changes for whoever answers for the plant
A bottleneck is always found too late, when half the shop is standing around waiting. With the camera you see it earlier: the queue grows in front of one machine while the conveyor downstream empties at the same time. Those two figures — how many parts wait here, how many pass there — say which station is the problem without walking the shop. The supervisor moves people and material with the picture in front of him.
What people usually ask
How does IRIS know there is a bottleneck?
By counting. IRIS counts the parts waiting in front of the machine and the parts leaving on the next conveyor. When one figure goes up while the other goes down, that is the bottleneck. No new sensor is needed on the machine: the count is done on the picture, by drawing the zone being watched and the line things cross.
Does it predict when the queue will build up?
No. IRIS does not predict: it reports what is happening while it happens. It sees that the queue has grown from twenty to fifty parts in twenty minutes and says so straight away. That is early enough to act before the next station runs out of work, but the forecast and the decision belong to a person.
Does it replace the system that already runs production?
No. The production system knows how many parts each machine has declared. What it does not know is how many are on the floor, on a conveyor or in a bin waiting their turn. IRIS counts what can be seen and puts that figure next to the one that already exists. It is the material nobody has declared yet, and it usually explains the delay.
Other cameras
- CAM-240 · The line has stopped with a pallet jammed inside
- CAM-241 · The line is running, but a gap opens every few seconds
- CAM-243 · The cell is ready and the bin is empty
- CAM-244 · A copper coil mounted on a steel line
- CAM-245 · A unit moves down the line with no cover on
- CAM-246 · The box takes the bypass and skips inspection
Simulation · how IRIS works
Everything comes in. Only what matters gets through.
This sums up what IRIS does with one alert, from the moment it appears until it is closed. The real screen holds far more; this is the main thread.
- Cameras on the map
- You draw an area
- What passed shows up
Next step
Why did the line stop?
237 cases, and in every one of them IRIS raises an alert when something happens. You see each image as it is, and then with what it understands on top.
How many bays are free right now?
15 cases: 9 raise an alert when something happens and 6 only measure. You see each image as it is, and then with what IRIS understands on top.
And the best part
You decide the rule onceand it is applied the same way every time.
At three in the morning it means what it means at noon, on camera one and on camera four thousand. It does not depend on who is on shift, or how tired they are.
Tell us your problem and we will say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.
We reply the same working day.