Siemens and P&G Scale Industrial AI for Real-Time Quality Inspection
Siemens and Procter & Gamble (P&G), one of the world’s largest consumer goods manufacturers, are expanding the deployment of an AI-based quality inspection solution across P&G’s manufacturing operations worldwide. The system inspects products in real time during production, delivers comprehensive inspection coverage at full line speed and helps improve quality consistency. Depending on the product, scrap rates have been reduced by 10 to 20 percent. Furthermore, new deployments can be commissioned five to ten times faster than traditional bespoke vision systems.
The Visual Inspection Cockpit (VIC) is used in high-speed consumer goods manufacturing, where products consist of delicate, textured materials that naturally shift, stretch or wrinkle at high production speeds. Traditional vision systems often require extensive reconfiguration when materials, packaging designs or production environments change. By using Industrial AI, VIC can adapt more effectively to these variations and maintain inspection performance across a broad range of products.
Developed jointly by Siemens and P&G, the solution combines P&G’s deep learning models with Siemens’ Industrial Edge computing platform, industrial PCs powered by Nvidia GPUs and AI hardware and software. Siemens supports the industrial computing infrastructure, software scaling capabilities and long-term operation of the system across production sites.
“Our Industrial AI and Industrial Edge capabilities deliver what high-speed production demands: full inspection accuracy for thousands of products per minute, scalable from a single line to a global footprint. This collaboration demonstrates what we mean when we say we’re making industrial AI real,” said Rainer Brehm, COO for automation and CTO at Siemens Digital Industries.
“We engineered this solution to solve a myriad of industry challenges traditional vision systems couldn’t touch: accurate characterization of overlapping components, the subtlety of low-contrast defects, the complexity of highly decorated products and packaging, tight time coordination, real-time PLC integration with single product reject at high production rates with continuous inspection,” said Paul Thomas, Director of Machine Vision and Applied AI at Procter & Gamble.
Inspection results are processed close to the production equipment on Siemens’ Industrial Edge and integrated directly into manufacturing operations. The system can automatically trigger actions such as alerts or the removal of defective products from the production line. Quality data can also be collected and analyzed over time, helping production teams identify trends and support continuous improvement efforts.
For more information: www.dex.siemens.com
