Fujitsu AI transforms manufacturing lines with new quality control system for Rehau
02/07/2024
Fujitsu has announced details of successful field trials for a new artificial intelligence (AI)-based quality inspection solution for Rehau Industries SE & Co KG, which will play an important role in optimising quality control for Rehau in the future with features such as defect detection for its production processes for key products.
As part of the internationally operating Rehau Group, Rehau Industries SE & Co KG, based in Rehau in Upper Franconia, Germany, is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of polymer-based solutions. The company offers innovative products and services in the fields of construction technology, windows, interior fittings, profiles and cooling, as well as fluid and rail solutions.
Extrusion profiles, a key product in Rehau’s portfolio, were selected for the pilot programme for Fujitsu’s quality inspection AI solution. Extensive product diversity, combined with the highest standards for a perfect surface, make quality assurance a challenge. Rehau produces more than 200,000 different versions of these in various colours, patterns and designs in multiple factories worldwide. The profiles are manufactured using the extrusion process on large machines and are wound into coils at the end of the line.
While Rehau has relied on visual inspection by line workers to ensure quality control in its production processes to date, this time-consuming process highlighted a number of challenges, including that the quality of goods being manufactured could only be checked at the beginning or end of a bundle or by taking samples during production. Despite high process stability and control, this presented an ongoing risk of undetected errors and quality control issues.
To address these challenges, Fujitsu delivered a new quality control system to streamline this process in pilot operations, during which it successfully detected over 99% of all defects on a test dataset (99.32%). The integrated AI was trained using images of the manufactured profiles in optimum condition, which allows the system to reliably detect all types of defect during the manufacturing process.
By monitoring and documenting product quality continuously, Fujitsu’s solution also allows any fault-relevant processes to be identified and analysed. This ensures that potential defects and anomalies can be anticipated on the basis of the knowledge gained and thus avoided.
“Quality management is increasingly important to our customers. As anyone experienced with manufacturing processes can tell you, even small production errors can have a major impact down the line, especially when you are trying to optimise the use of materials,” commented Niels Strohkirch, Head of Business Unit Uvance and Member of the Management Team at Fujitsu Germany GmbH. “With our AI solution, we are demonstrating how experienced workers wielding smart technologies can achieve better results in areas where human manual or visual inspection alone has been the norm.”
“With the new Fujitsu quality control solution, we will be able to take product quality to a new level, reducing the risk of complaints and waste. This contributes to both cost reduction and, overall, more sustainable production. As the next step, we now plan to transfer the pilot into a productive system and ideally explore further use cases,” explained Tobias Lehner, Smart Technologies Engineer at Rehau.
Rehau was particularly impressed by the high degree of professionalism in its collaboration with Fujitsu, evident in the rapid implementation and solution-oriented approach. Fujitsu will soon deploy a solution for fully automated, visual quality inspection of Rehau’s extrusion profiles, allowing the company to use its valuable resources more efficiently than ever before.
