Summary
- Profile Type
- Business Offer
- POD Reference
- BOBG20230815006
- Term of Validity
- 15 August 2023 - 14 August 2025
- Company's Country
- Bulgaria
- Type of partnership
- Supplier agreement
- Commercial agreement
- Targeted Countries
- All countries
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General information
- Short Summary
- Bulgarian company working in the domain of advanced engineering offers its know-how & expertise in the development of customized solutions for automation of visual quality inspection processes under supplier or commercial agreements. Its end-to-end services include both mechanical and software engineering for the machine design and AI/machine learning algorithms development with application in the automotive industry, microelectronics, metal production, brick manufacturing, food-processing, etc.
- Full Description
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The company at hand resides in Sofia, Bulgaria and specializes in advanced engineering project execution, offering state-of-the-art solutions to automate visual quality inspection processes across diverse manufacturing settings. As an integrator of mechanical and software engineering expertise, the company excels in creating sophisticated and yet economically efficient machines for automated visual quality inspection. Alternatively, if a specific machine for automated process execution is already developed, just an additional quality inspection-oriented module can be developed and integrated in the machine functionality.
The process begins with the development of tailored automation hardware concepts, ensuring seamless integration in the manufacturing line of the customer (or the machine hardware in case of singular machines), efficient parts handling, and precise image capturing of inspected products. Leveraging AI and machine learning, the company's software algorithms analyze these images with exceptional accuracy, detecting defects with high precision. At the same time, the process scrap levels are not impacted by this software. Reducing as much as possible and finding the right balance between underkill and overkill of the image inspection algorithms is an advanced topic, on which the company’s experts consult the customer and technology adopters.
The innovation in this business model is the combination of two fundamentally different worlds to work together and build machines that tackle the most complex automation tasks – mechanical engineering solutions to allow for smart part handling automation such that usable images for analysis can be obtained and software engineering programming skills and knowledge to utilize modern AI and machine learning algorithms in the software, such that high analysis accuracy levels are achieved. Reference results from already implemented machines in the automotive industry show that in a cycle time of 4 seconds, 2 images per product can be obtained and analyzed for a list of 20 defects with accuracy of 99.50%.
The business/service offering of the company is very flexible because the focus is put on fulfilling the exact customer needs for a specific project and not re-purposing already existing products. Consequently, the customer’s way of working and requirements are thoroughly examined, and the proposed automation hardware and software are custom developed for the specific setting. All solutions and integration in already available systems in the sense of Industry 4.0 are possible: some clients prefer on-premises solutions, while others are extremely cloud-oriented and both approaches are aligned with the insight generation using machine vision method. In this context, there are two main cooperation types, which can benefit from the company’s expertise:
- the company at hand can act as main contractor for execution of automation projects at manufacturing plants of the customer (under a supplier agreement). In this case, the customer presents current needs for headcount optimization, quality improvement or other motivation for deployment of machines that automate processes, and the company at hand executes such projects from the design phase up to the deployment in the manufacturing facility;
- the company at hand can act as sub-contractor for upgrading already existing machines from a machine building company with automated visual inspection modules (under a commercial agreement): in this case, the customer has already developed machines that execute specific actions like parts assembly, welding, soldering, or typical, and the company at hand can develop and implement additional modules for visual inspection of the products after the standard procedures of the machine are completed.
The company acts as technology integrator for machine vision hardware and software for Cognex Corporation (US). - Advantages and Innovations
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The main advantage of the company’s service offering lies in the ability to completely execute end-to-end a project for automation of visual quality inspection processes in any industry. This process is usually completely manually done by an operator by handling the products with hands and no images for image analysis are available. Thus, a successful automation requires first a suitable automation concept to ensure parts are automatically collected from the previous process, automatically inspected, and rejected parts are removed from the process, while OK (quality-compliant) parts are automatically transferred to the next operations. In order to achieve this, both mechanical engineering and software engineering knowledge is applied for the machine design and requirements of the AI/machine learning algorithms are considered from the earliest stage of the development. Additionally, the offered service includes the company’s expertise in feasibility study execution for the choice of machine visions components – the combination of camera/lens/light and software algorithms is specific for every project and key factor for the final success.
This approach guarantees the customer that the complex visual inspection processes will be automated in a way that no critical defects will remain hidden, and the quality of the products will be 100% independent of human factors. Considering the different collaboration models with customers, following benefits can be outlined:
- manufacturing company automates visual inspection: quality improvement by ensuring 100% human independent inspection process; output increase due to 24/7 automated inspection process; headcount and scrap reduction; realization of short return on investment times;
- machine building company includes visual inspection modules in their machines: improved market attractiveness of the product by increased functionality offering; revenue increase. - Stage of Development
- Already on the market
- Sustainable Development Goals
- Goal 12: Responsible Consumption and Production
- Goal 8: Decent Work and Economic Growth
- Goal 9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure
- IPR status
- IPR applied but not yet granted
Partner Sought
- Expected Role of a Partner
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Two main types of partnerships are suitable to the company’s offering – supplier agreement and commercial agreement.
Starting with the supplier agreement, the company at hand already now acts as trusted supplier for automation and engineering services to many multi-national companies in different industries in Bulgaria and Romania. The perfect partner in such collaboration is a company, which business or operations model includes some kind of serial manufacturing of products – because every serial production inevitably contains at least one visual quality inspection step, where operators look at the products and decide based on visual criteria like color, size, other features if the products is compliant to the quality requirements or not. Such processes are crucial for the quality of the products and the image of the company in society. Therefore, improving such processes is the main task for most companies and one of the best ways to improve both the efficiency and the quality of the process is its automation by deployment of modern machine vision technologies. Some prominent examples of already established partnerships and projects in different industries include: quality inspection of ultrasonic welding process in automotive industry; encapsulation gel inspection in microelectronics industry; metal bearings inspection in automotive industry; metal forging inspection in metal production industry; bricks quality inspection in bricks manufacturing; soldering inspection in high-voltage applications; quality inspection of envelope food powder in food-processing industry; seat covers inspection in automotive industry and many others. The company at hand will act as supplier for the complete automation project execution, with all engineering services and topics around it. Thus, the expectation of the partner is to provide use cases for automation of quality inspection process, that will be completed from the supplier.
The second option for partnership is under a commercial agreement with another company, which acts as supplier for engineering or manufacturing services. Especially suitable business model is the collaboration with machine producers, i.e. a company that produces machines for automation of processes like welding, soldering, assembly of parts or any other activity which manipulates products and is oriented towards robust and repeatable execution. Such machines usually don’t focus on the final quality inspection of the product, after the machine process is completed. Here comes the service offering at hand and suitable machine vision modules can be developed together with the machine producer and they can be offered as additional features of the full machine. The expectation to the partner is to explain the current machine functionalities and typical quality requirements for the products – then the possibilities of machine vision will be explored together and suitable visual quality inspection modules will be developed and marketed together.
The company has successfully completed projects using the equipment of Cognex Corporation and advising and helping manufacturing companies in Bulgaria to implement them. At the same time, the company is currently in the process of offering multiple projects for machine vision implementation to manufacturing companies in Romania, Malaysia and China. - Type and Size of Partner
- Big company
- R&D Institution
- SME 11-49
- SME <=10
- SME 50 - 249
- University
- Type of partnership
- Supplier agreement
- Commercial agreement
Dissemination
- Technology keywords
- 01001001 - Automation, Robotics Control Systems
- 01003012 - Imaging, Image Processing, Pattern Recognition
- 02003001 - Process automation
- 01003003 - Artificial Intelligence (AI)
- 01003020 - Building Automation Software
- Market keywords
- 08002007 - Other industrial automation
- 08002003 - Process control equipment and systems
- 08002005 - Machine vision software and systems
- Targeted countries
- All countries