Organizations in the manufacturing industry are under more pressure than ever to increase output while maintaining high quality, productivity and reliability standards. Consumer market demands and global competition demand the most efficient and effective manufacturing systems and processes. Machine vision is an innovative technology that enables companies to reduce their reliance on traditional manual work, enabling automation to solve quality control issues and minimize defective operations. Machine vision also increases product output, enabling the inspection and assembly of desired goods at exponential rates compared to traditional methods once commonly performed by people. Due to its many benefits, machine vision is gaining popularity across industries and continues to be adopted by manufacturing systems, enabling organizations to gain or maintain a strong foothold in their respective markets. In this article we will provide an understanding of machine vision and its benefits, and explain why they span so many business types and product categories.

machine vision definition

In industry, machine vision is the process by which computers provide automatic image-based inspection for a variety of applications, most commonly in assembly line configurations. The term applies to many different levels of technology that have hardware and software products that work with other integrated systems to extract data from analog or digital images to execute methodical processes with high precision. For example, in manufacturing environments such as the automotive industry, machine vision is an integral discipline in order to employ superior quality control as well as streamlining processes to increase productivity and minimize costly inefficiencies. The assembly of a vehicle requires the coordinated and seamless performance of multiple systems to accomplish the task of building a program product. A large portion of the entire process is automated in modern high-volume factories and requires rigorous scrutiny to maintain the quality standards an organization needs for continued success in a competitive marketplace.