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What if the customer spots the dent before we do?

The defect walks out the door

It is 11:40. A freshly finished grey car sits at the final inspection station, under the light rigs. On the front door, right above the crease, there is a dent the size of a coin, and the gap on that door does not match the one next to it. The car has been there forty seconds. In two minutes it leaves the line and goes to the despatch yard.

8 cameras across 6 sectors

This is how you ask for it

«Tell me if a part comes out with a dent, a crack or a gap that does not match, and keep the photo for me.»

That car travels a thousand kilometres on a truck before anyone looks at the door properly. The dealer looks at it, or the customer does on handover day. Then the panel is fixed in somebody else’s workshop, the transport is paid for twice, and somebody has to explain how it left a line that has an inspection station right at the end.

You decide once

You decide this once. Quality says what gets checked at each station — panels, gaps, welds, surface — where on the line it gets checked and who is told: if a dent or an uneven gap shows up at the final station, tell the quality manager with the photo and the station number before the part moves to despatch. IRIS applies that on every shift, part by part, with nobody having to remember.

A visual defect is cheap the minute it appears and ruinous three days later. On the line it is fixed with a polish and ten minutes of station time. At the customer’s it is fixed with a complaint, a return shipment and an awkward conversation. And it does not have to be a car: a steel plate with an open crack along the top face, a parcel that reaches the despatch table torn and wet, three rows of a solar field with shattered glass. It is always the same thing: something visible, in front of a camera, that nobody looked at in time.

The problem is not a shortage of people looking. It is that looking is tiring. An inspector watches hundreds of identical parts go by in a shift, and identical is exactly what switches attention off. At eleven in the morning he sees the dent. At seven in the evening, same part, same light, he does not. Nobody is to blame for that: it is how a person works.

IRIS always looks the same way. You explain what counts as a defect in your product — a dent, a crack, a burr, a crushed box, a broken panel — and it flags any part that does not look like the rest, with the photo and the point on the line. It does not say whether that part is scrapped or reworked: someone who knows decides that. It says the part needs looking at, and it says so while the part is still inside the plant.

What changes

Before, the defect turned up in final rework, in the yard audit or straight at the dealership, and by then nobody knew which station had produced it. Now a photo arrives with the part, the time and the point on the line, while the product is still on the belt. The difference is not only fixing it sooner: it is knowing where it is being produced, and being able to go and look at the machine making it.

Where we have seen it

  • Final inspection bay. A finished grey saloon stands on the conveyor under the light banks. There is a dent on the front door marked with a red circle, right above the crease line, and the gap between the door and the wing is not even: it opens wider at the top than at the bottom. An inspector in hi-vis with a tablet is looking at it from the aisle; behind him, a colleague in a cap watches. IRIS sees the mark on the panel and the uneven gap.

    CAM-228A dent in the door and a gap that does not line up

    «Tell me if a car goes past with a dent in the panel or an uneven door gap.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • Morning shift in machining. Aluminium housings move along the belt one behind another. As one passes under the vision portal, the red laser line runs across it and the screen alongside shows the surface enlarged: a crack runs right across the wall of the casting. The portal signal tower turns red. The operator is at the console with the image in front of her. IRIS has seen the crack on the outer face and flagged it there and then.

    CAM-247A crack in the casting, caught under the vision portal

    «Tell me if a part comes through with a crack or a burr on the outside face, and keep me the picture.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • Mid-morning at the inspection table, before dispatch. On the table sits a cardboard box with its top burst open, the board swollen and a water stain around it. An operator in gloves lifts the torn flap. A colleague with a tablet writes down what she sees. Another holds an intact box on the rollers, waiting. Behind them a pallet stands ready with the pallet truck. IRIS sees the deformed board, the tear and the stain, and flags that parcel before it leaves.

    CAM-268A burst, soaked box about to go on the truck

    «Tell me if a parcel reaches the dispatch table torn, crushed or wet, and keep the photo for me.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • Inspection belt for blue and white capsules. On the left, the capsule filler discharges onto the belt under its ring light, and beside it a bin holds the bulk capsules. On the belt, among the whole capsules, several are split open, with brown powder spilled around them. An operator in gown, hairnet, mask and gloves is watching the belt from the right-hand side. The defective ones keep moving towards the outfeed.

    CAM-292Split capsules and loose powder among the good ones

    «Alert me when split or broken capsules go past on the belt, or powder spilled around them.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • Mid-morning at the inspection table. A freshly rolled slab stands still under the lamp, and an open crack runs the length of its top face, edges lifted and already rusted. Two inspectors look at it from the walkway on the right; one is holding a tablet. The rollers are still underneath. IRIS sees the mark, places it on the slab and measures it against the slab itself.

    CAM-373An open crack running the length of the slab

    «Tell me if a slab leaves the table with a crack or a fold on its top face, and save me the picture with the length.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • A solar field on the hillside, mid-morning. Eight rows of panels facing the sea. The upper ones are perfect, deep blue and even. Down at the bottom, three rows look whitish: the glass is chipped and cracked, there are modules split and shifted out of place and, in the middle, a gap where a panel is missing and the bare frame shows. From this same camera, yesterday they all looked the same.

    CAM-354Three rows of panels with the glass shattered

    «Tell me if broken, dirty or displaced panels show up in any row of the field.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • Body shop. An unpainted body leaves the welding station on its skid. At the joint between the front pillar and the roof there is a seam highlighted in red: from the outside it looks uneven. Two inspectors in helmets and hi-vis stand beside it; one points at the spot with his hand, the other notes it on a tablet. To the left, the orange arms of the cell. Behind, the next body rolls in. IRIS sees the outer seam and flags the unit.

    CAM-227A pillar weld seam that has not closed properly

    «Tell me if the pillar-to-roof seam comes out uneven as the body leaves the cell.»

    See this camera →Industry

  • Mid-afternoon in aisle 12. A forklift has hit the racking on the right. The blue upright is bent inwards, two pallets have shed their load and there is burst cardboard across the floor. The driver is still sitting on the truck. Three colleagues in high-vis have walked over and are looking. IRIS sees the contact between the truck and the structure, marks the exact second and saves the video. Whether the bay is still safe is decided by an inspection, not by the camera.

    CAM-270A rack hit that nobody is going to report

    «Tell me when a forklift hits a rack, and save me the video of the impact.»

    See this camera →Industry

What it does not do

IRIS does not measure. It will not tell you that a gap is three millimetres wide and the tolerance is two: that is the job of a gauge or a measuring bench.

And it only sees the face the camera sees. A defect under the car, on the inner face of a plate or inside a closed box is not in the image, and IRIS does not invent what is not in the image.

Questions

Does this replace a machine vision system on the line?
No. A machine vision cell works with the part held still, controlled lighting and tolerances in millimetres, and for that it beats IRIS. IRIS works with the cameras already hanging in the plant and looks at the part in motion: it covers the defect that is visible to the naked eye and that nobody catches today, because nobody can watch everything. The two sit together well: one controls the dimension, the other watches what goes past.
How does IRIS know what counts as a defect in my product?
You tell it, in words and with examples. You describe what worries you about your part — a dent in the panel, a crack along the top face, a box that is torn or wet — and you show it the area of the image to watch. From then on it flags anything matching that description. Nothing has to be programmed and no technical rule has to be written: you explain it the way you would explain it to someone starting on the station today.
What if the defect is too small for the camera to tell apart?
Then it does not see it, and we say so before we start. What IRIS can detect depends on the camera’s resolution, the distance to the part and the light in that spot. A fine scratch on dark paint, six metres away under raking light, is simply not in the image. Before a rule is accepted, that camera is checked with that part under the real light of the shift. If it cannot be told apart, we say so, change the framing, or drop it.
Does the line stop by itself when a defect shows up?
No, unless you decide it and it gets wired up. By default IRIS alerts: it sends the photo, the time and the point on the line to whoever needs to see it. Stopping a line is a decision with a cost, and a person with judgement takes it, not an automatic alert. If in your case a given defect should stop the belt, that action is defined with you and written down, so it is always clear who decided what and why.

See all the questions

A different case every time

Watch what happens. Then watch what IRIS does with it.

Not a recorded video and not a drawing: it is a summary of the real tool, with a different case each time round. The whole tool does not fit in a box.

  1. You ask
  2. IRIS searches
  3. It shows you
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And the best part

Sometimes you do not need an alarm:you need a number.

How many people came in, and when. You draw a line over the image and the camera counts. People counting is certified by the Centro Español de Metrología through NeuralPax.

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