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Automation Technologies 4/2015

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Automation Technologies 4/2015

SENSORS AND MEASUREMENT

SENSORS AND MEASUREMENT Better quality by improving traceability The globalization of technology is influencing the wave of intelligent innovation. Mostly from Germany and is sweeping the entire industrialised world. China obviously is deeply affected. Currently, the chinese enterprises are faced by two problems: first, product upgrading; second, transforming the industry processes in order to meet the international market demands. In the field of industrial sensors, the manufacturers are constantly working on product upgrading by developing better quality, precision and improved protection rating of the products. This improves the usability for their clients and increases the scope of applications even under harsh conditions. To meet the challenges from the markets, strategies that provide the integrated solutions are gaining more traction. As is the case with Sensopart, a German family owned company, located in Gottenheim. Providing integrated solutions and customer service backed by the strength of skill and experience of more than 20 years. This helps their clients achieve higher efficiency, optimized utilisation of resources and minimized production cost. Considering the working of German mittelstand company, a significant investment of resources on R&D to improve product performance is obvious. But also important is focusing on the next phase of technological innovation i.e. Industry 4.0. Internet of Things being one of the intelligent core technologies of Industry 4.0. Manufacturers are all required to add 2D codes on their products, to track, control and plan each part in production through a way which can be identified by machines. The reaction to Industry 4.0 is inconsistent from each industry. There also is a large gap between the markets of various industries. Therefore decisions must be made by each enterprise on how to place itself in the market and how to achieve personalized development based on its own Company name: SensoPart Industriesensorik GmbH Headquarters: Gottenheim, Germany Turnover: $ 23 million Products: Optoelectronic sensors particularly laser sensors, colour sensors, distance sensors, and vision sensors, code readers, fiber-optic sensors, ultrasonic inductive and capacitive sensors About

SENSORS AND MEASUREMENT characteristics. A large number of industries want to improve the process while another significant number of them want to improve the product itself. For companies looking to improve the product quality system, SensoPart induced a high performance code reader - the Visor code reader. It not only can adapt to high-speed product lines, but also achieve approximately 100% code-reading rate under limited engraving conditions. Application in food and beverage industry Since the establishment of food safety traceability system by EU in 1997, other countries successively made appropriate initiatives in accordance with their own conditions. To cope with quality safety traceability trade barriers set by Europe, America, and other countries for imported food and requirements for life quality security from consumer group in these areas, China actively introduces food safety traceability systems. A world-famous drinking water supplier prints 2D codes onto their products to achieve the product quality traceability system. By reading information in the 2D code, inquiry of information such as water source, ID number, production batch, product specifications can be achieved. The high volume of production and packaging at higher speed is a prominent feature of food & beverage industry worldwide, therefore ordinary code readers cannot fulfil its requirements for speed. With its unique functional advantages, SensoPart’s Visor code reader provides a rapid, flexible, stable and intelligent solution. It has multiple and selectable resolutions; therefore, different resolution can be selected to meet different requirements of reading speed, without affecting the reading rate. In addition, it also has basic functions of ordinary object recognition vision sensors, e.g., pattern contrast, grayscale, contrast ratio. Therefore, the Visor code reader not only can read various of 1D and 2D codes, but also detect different characteristics of objects. Application in electronics industry An essential element of the quality traceability system is code reading. The code reader reads out information in barcodes to collect product information and to realize the tracing of the products based on collected information. The best example being the built-in lithium batteries of today‘s iPhones and iPads. The built-in lithium batteries are all manufactured by the best-known electronics manufacturer in the world. In order to achieve quality control for lithium batteries, they print multiple 2D codes on the surface of each lithium battery with laser marking machines. Product quality can be effectively traced in this way. However, due to technological limitations and the inconsistency in size and quality the laser engraved 2D codes cause some difficulty in reading the code. Engineers of this company tried using code readers from various manufacturers but were unable to achieve the desired reading rate. After early communication, the customer decided to try SensoPart’s Visor code reader. With its humanized operation interface, easy operation and high precision, a desirable reading performance in terms of quality and rate was achieved. Application in the automotive industry The automotive industry has always been the biggest customer for high tech, highly intelligent systems. In the past, high-load works such as installation check were assigned to workers. Today, intelligent systems not only bring breathing space for workers, but also increase the accuracy of auto parts, save time and cost. A complete car consists of tens of thousands of parts, and personalized production is simply a fantasy without product identification setting and all-intelligence tracing and control. A famous German auto parts supplier was faced with such problems for a long time: it cannot be guaranteed that all 2D code qualities reach the same high standard due to production processes, leading to impact on consequent code reading as the 2D code reading rate of ordinary code readers on these codes is not very good and unstable. This problem has been effectively improved by using the Visor code reader from SensoPart, which attributed to the employment of high-grade processing chip and logic compensation algorithm. Photographs: SensoPart www.sensopart.com AUTOMATION TECHNOLOGIES 4/2015

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