The rapid growth and intensifying competition in the electric vehicle market necessitate automotive component production, with power batteries at its core, to move towards higher levels of customization while achieving flexible production of multiple varieties and small batches. This shift places higher demands on operators, who need to quickly adapt to handling products of different types and specifications to ensure smooth and efficient production processes.

Ansomat, featured in this case study, is facing demands from EV battery customers for flexible battery module configuration and fast, accurate installation. To address this, Ansomat sought a machine vision product with a low barrier to entry, short training time, and high accuracy to implement its services. Ultimately, Cognex In-Sight 3800 met these requirements.

Customer

Ansomat

Ansomat is a leading provider of assembly guidance solutions for manufacturing. Its innovative operator guidance system, Ansomatic, supports various industries, including EV batteries, focusing on solving challenges related to component assembly verification and operator guidance.

Challenges

Machine Vision Solutions Generally

Have High Barriers to Entry and Complex Operation

Facing the demands of customized and flexible production, the Ansomatic operator guidance system needs to ensure operators can accurately perform each task with minimal training. However, many machine vision solutions, while capturing images to verify operations or inspect products, struggle to balance solution complexity, processing accuracy, and processing speed. In other words, it's difficult to achieve the highest accuracy and processing speed for machine vision product verification with the least complex solution.

Ansomat hopes to easily utilize machine vision technology and thereby help customers bring products to market faster and reduce scrap rates. Ansomat believes an advanced machine vision solution should meet three core user requirements:

• Shorten end-user time-to-market and reduce solution complexity

• Enhance end-user operator skills to handle complex and varied tasks

• Provide a more scalable and customizable guidance solution for EV battery pack assembly

Solution

In-Sight 3800

In-Sight 3800 Vision System (Click to view product introduction) cleverly integrates AI and rule-based tools, showcasing powerful, full-featured capabilities to address various complex application problems. It supports high-speed, high-resolution, and highly flexible applications, such as rapid multi-target detection, single-acquisition optimized imaging to ensure precise verification, and solution expansion through accompanying software.

Furthermore, the In-Sight 3800's built-in AI edge learning tools are easy to deploy and can be activated simply by training with examples. This feature, while providing excellent functionality, effectively addresses the challenges of high barriers to entry and long training times often associated with many vision solutions on the market, bringing unprecedented convenience and efficiency to users.

Results

Accessible Technology, Out-of-the-Box Usability

The In-Sight 3800's low barrier to entry allows AI-based edge learning tools to be implemented in a wider range of industrial manufacturing processes, comprehensively helping Ansomat reduce training time, lower scrap rates, and shorten time-to-market:

• Reduced end-user training time from 3 months to one week

• Reduced customer EV battery-related claim rates by 90%

• Significantly reduced scrap rates by minimizing operator errors at end-user facilities

Ultimately, these saved time and costs will create opportunities for greater product innovation and value creation, driving high-quality enterprise development.