Today’s world, is getting matured enough to understand the latest technology in almost every field so as our customers are. They keep a keen eye on new problems they daily face in production process and they try to address those problems in best possible ways. There are lot of innovative machine vision requirements for which they require highest quality standards.
We as a solution provider, are very engaged at SPAN on effectively handling customers’ requirements and we try to address them in most efficient ways. We divide our order processing in two phases which we call pre-order and post order. Years of expertise have been combined in an effort to provide the industry with a pleasurable working experience with the Inspection Systems—inspired by actual issues that consumers face when using the system.

First and foremost, what is the effective order process?

An effective order process means keeping track of client’s orders and effectively managing different stages until delivery. This is the essence of an effective order process. There are clearly too many procedures and systems in play to keep the effective order process running smoothly.

At SPAN we have two key phases of order process:

1. Pre-Order : Order Analysis
2. Post-Order : Order Processing, Order Delivery

Pre-order processing is first and very important phase for making the order process effective till system is installed at customer’s end. In this stage, we discuss with customer and clear all details or clarity required for a particular order before client’s actual PO to avoid any misunderstanding in order process, this is why we call it as order analysis. This phase consists: URS discussion, Pre-installation Sample evaluation, Feasibility study, Sales quote and Purchase order (PO).
Post-order processing will come when we receive a purchase order from clients. This phase again subdivided into Order Processing and Order Delivery. Order processing consists Board meetings, BOM, DQ, Design customization if any, Manufacturing, Quality control(QC),and Kitting. Order delivery consists: Final system testing, Packing and Dispatch.

ORDER ANALYSIS

Order analysis is most important part of any work order, this is where if mistake happens will results in unsatisfied order delivery. So we take special care during this phase by keeping customer in continuous loop with details URS review from our side including review comments, once URS is approved by customer a sample is tested and submitted a report then study the machine feasibility and if required pre-installation will be done.

Stages of order analysis phase are as below:

URS: User Requirements Specifications (URS) are prepared by the customer where their expectations and requirements are mentioned. After receiving the URS, we review it minutely and if there are any disparity we clarify those in review comments and also discuss them personally. Once all the review points are cleared and understood by both of us the order will be proceed to the next stage after approval.

QUOTE BY SALES TEAM & PURCHASE ORDER: After URS and sample reports are submitted  to the client all details will be clear in order for making a quote by the sales team. The offer(quote) will be submitted to the clients and they will review all documents likewise URS, sample reports with a feasibility study, and quote. When PO is raised from client order will be carried to the next stage. i.e. Order processing, and Order delivery.

This is how we effectively process customer’s valuable  purchase order

It is always a great pleasure to receive a purchase order from our valuable customers. We feel it is of utmost importance for customers to know how their order is processed at our end. It seems that in most cases once the order is placed, the customer is completely blank until the lead-time/delivery time of the order. We believe that it is vital to keep customers connected to our workflow which gives them trust and confidence in the supply chain.

ORDER PROCESSING

After receiving the purchase order, the order will be hooked on our board. Board is a special place where daily all the teams including production, design and service and QC meet to discuss the progress and hindrance in order processing. Any issues will be noted on a board and the respective team will start working on it.

DESIGN CUSTOMIZATION IF ANY: Hardware and Software customization if logical we welcome it wholeheartedly which also makes our system stronger and improves our learning curve. Hardware / Software customization if any as mentioned in DQ will be designed and developed in parallel to kitting where our design & development team will be rigorously working to make the best possible changes according to the requirement. Once a design is approved by the design lead it will be manufactured.

MANUFACTURING & QUALITY CONTROL: Manufacturing happens following stringent guidelines. We practice good manufacturing practices with minimum waste and quality check and its report at every stages of manufacturing. Once the parts are manufactured they are quality checked with latest tools for their correctness with respect to given tolerances in the design drawing. Individual parts as well as entire assembly is checked for quality and correctness. The assembled parts are then transferred to kitting for further integration testing.

KITTING: Kitting is a parallel process that works throughout the order processing phase, all the components as and when available are placed in a kit/box according to the BOM. This channelizes the hardware and electronic components to the work order. Once there are sufficient components to set up a mock system, the QC team will set up the system for in-house testing.

ORDER DELIVERY

Order delivery means the products are well packed and documents needed for delivery are generated. After kiting is done sales team takes approval for dispatch then final testing is performed with operational documents then goes for packing and dispatch at the committed date.

PACKING: If there are many big components in a system we prefer to pack it in a wooden box whereas other small systems are packed in heavy-grade corrugated box. Each box is labelled with a sequence number of the total boxes. In a warehouse, packing process involves selecting appropriate materials of a container for packing the products, weighing the package, and labelling it with the proper invoice or packing slip. Before packing it is essential for us to take photographs and videos of all the components minutely which are then uploaded to ERP and linked to the order. Responsible team will check and minutely verify all the documents for their correctness including the shipping address before dispatch.

DISPATCH: We have a tie-up with reputed courier service which carefully handles the consignment during shipping.  Consignment is attached with applicable shipping label and invoice of the order. Dispatch details of the consignment along with the tracking details are sent to the customer.

“Human vision has no meaning without a beautiful brain”

Similarly

“Images from camera has no value without a powerful software”

Beauty of Human Vision

The Irony is we still don’t know exactly how human vision works, but here is a example illustrating how we humans can do most complicated task with utmost ease.

Limitations of using humans for machine vision tasks

So we can conclude that brain do well what computers do poorly, and vice versa. Human brain is the best learning machine and can also produce new thoughts / ideas whereas Computers are meant to perform repeated task.

Cameras are nothing but an attempted replica of human eye

Correlation between human eye and camera can be seen below:

Evolution of camera

Working of Camera Sensor

How are color seen to eyes?

How are color captured by camera sensor?

Machine vision working methodology

Our understandings of visual information are highly developed. But for computer to understand the images captured by the camera are very difficult. Because we humans visualize an image as a whole while computer software works on pixels (i.e. the smallest unit of image). So below video clip will help us to visualize how difficult it is for humans to work in similar way as a computer dose.

Circle of Confusion

Few examples on How SPAN  tried to figure out a solution to keep the complexity of training a machine vision tasks

• Our Auto Teaching module requires few simple inputs from user to train a computer to accomplish a given machine vision task.
• Our Colour Segmentation tool also requires few simple gestures from user to correctly identify colour of the intended product to be inspected.

Auto Teaching

Videos Courtesy: