OMRON TECHNICS -Technical Papers-

In order to meet the diversifying needs of today’s consumers, there is a growing effort to realize variable-type, variable-volume production at a cost no less than that of mass production. To this end, it is necessary to shorten the tact time and start-up time for individual manufacturing equipment. ...

In recent years, product lifespans have become shorter because of technological innovation, and it requires manufacturing facility to quickly support new product types. In response to this request, design information of products and manufacturing facilities are comprehensively managed using the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) information platform, ...

In recent years, with the trend of machine learning, there has been an increase in the application of anomaly detection using machine learning to predict product defects in Factory Automation (FA) domain. However, because of the diversification of products and the efficiency of the manufacturing processes, ...

In recent years, many efforts have been made to increase productivity by standardizing manufacturing data (information) and unifying the design and maintenance in the manufacturing industry. On the other hand, customization (unique specifications or vendor-specific specifications) to create value and strengthen competitive advantage is ...

In recent years, production factories are required to identify the productivity bottlenecks and factors to respond to the diversification of production variety and/or worker turnover. An analysis of bottlenecks requires not only equipment operation data but also work time. However, the method for ...

In recent years, the domestic semiconductor industry has faced intense competition and supply chain disruptions due to semiconductor shortages. Amid the phaseout of ASIC production using older processes, we have struggled with how to respond when ASIC production is discontinued to maintain product supply to customers. ...

Products are required to have robust quality to operate stably against disturbances in various usage environments. To satisfy such requirements, it is necessary to verify operation under a variety of different conditions and to eliminate conditions that cause unstable operation, which is where CAE ...

Defects that were not anticipated in the design stage may occur at the prototyping stage. One of the reasons for this is the variability that is difficult to control and observe in the experience. If the output value or its change characteristics are not constant due to the variation, the true mechanism ...

In recent years, toward the realization of a carbon-neutral society, which is the Japanese government’s goal of achieving a carbon-neutral society by 2050, a movement to promote the spread of biomass plastics is becoming active. When switching from existing petroleum-derived plastics to biomass plastics, ...

In OMRON’s factory automation business, we provide solutions to address customer manufacturing issues by combining a rich product lineup and control algorithms. To expand this solution horizontally, we have built a technological knowledge sharing system and have made small improvements through DevOps, ...

Amidst efforts for a carbon-neutral and decarbonized society, manufacturing automation speeds up because of the declining labor force and satellite factory promotion. The growing use of electric, safety, and IoT devices in manufacturing ...

Solving labor shortages and improving product quality are major issues at manufacturing sites, and artificial intelligence (AI) is being applied as a means of improvement. However, there are cases where it is difficult to apply conventional AI. ...

With the recent increase in the frequency and power of power conversion equipment, the risk of dielectric breakdown in multilayer printed wiring boards is increasing. In order to respond to risks, a technology for predicting the partial discharge generation site and partial discharge starting voltage, including support for the high frequency range, has been desired. ...

In order to inspect the solder joints of invisible components on increasingly sophisticated automotive electronic circuit boards, we have been providing automated X-ray inspection systems using the CT method. However, our conventional technology, VT-X750-V1/V2 with continuous image capture control, repeatedly stopped and moved the image capture system stage when moving it to the field of view to be inspected, resulting in a loss of acceleration and braking time. ...

In recent years, rapidly changing market needs has led to a trend of shorter product lifecycles. To keep up with such market trends, it is necessary to shorten the launch time for production facilities. We introduced virtualization technology in our FA integrated development environment, Sysmac Studio, which enabled debugging without physical machines using a 3D simulation. ...

The declining working population and the energy saving of production sites for decarbonization have become major social issues. Toward this end, methods to effectively utilize the regenerative power of motors have been proposed, and DC powering of servo drives is expected to achieve this. ...

In preparation for responding to a recall when there is a defect in the product, it is necessary to quickly identify the recall target. In identifying the target, there is a method of assigning a 2D code that records traceability information such as the date of manufacture to the part. ...

In OMRON’s factory automation business, engineers around the world provide effective technical solutions to address customer manufacturing issues, in order to bring more value to customers. For further acceleration, we built a system to formalize the technical know-how and to share and to utilize globally, which beforehand, remained within individual engineers or within each region. We setup and classified technological knowledge as the outcome ...

Recently, social interest in safety and security has increased, and in addition to quality improvement that does not bring defective products to the market, traceability to manage target parts and the manufacturing process is important for quick identification when defects occur. In addition, mainly in the automobile industry, problems of unreadable marking due to post-processes like heat/polishing and painting after marking on metal objects ...

In recent years, labor force issues have become more serious, such as the declining labor force or the reduction in the number of skilled workers at manufacturing sites. And the factory automation necessity continues to increase as the countermeasure. In this paper, I propose a technique for defect classification using AI technology based on confirmation of the performance improvement compared with the conventional method. The conventional method ...

In recent years with the trend toward IoT, there has been an increase in cases of causal analysis for product defects in the Factory Automation (FA) field. However, a conventional method is not effective because the collected data has low independence by multiple processes and synchronous control. To solve the issue, we focus on a PLC control program that has information of them. In this paper, we propose ...

In in-line thickness inspection of glass and film for displays, there is a need for a sensor that is easy to adjust during installation and can stably measure even when tilted because of fluttering or wrinkling during transport. A fiber coaxial displacement sensor based on the chromatic confocal method has been released that replaces the triangulation distance measurement method that has been the mainstay of displacement sensors. The fiber coaxial displacement sensor is resistant to inclination on glossy surfaces, which has been a problem ...

The replacement of human work with AI has been promoted in recent years because the labor shortage in the manufacturing industry has become remarkable 1). In particular, anomaly detection by AI image inspection has come to be used. On the other hand, image inspection cannot detect abnormalities, such as insufficient axial force, in screw tightening due to the lack of difference in appearance. In this paper, we propose a method to ...

In recent years, there has been an increasing need for production to improve by utilizing information processing technology by utilizing the data generated by control equipment at production sites. Since the needs are diversifying and the improvement of information processing technology does not stop, there are a need for an environment where applications can quickly respond to the needs of the field ...

In the manufacturing industry, automation of manufacturing, especially the introduction of robots, is being actively promoted because of labor shortages and rising labor costs, but installation space, start-up person-hours, and flexibility at work are issues to be addressed. In particular, a 3D sensor is essential to estimating the position and orientation of parts accurately in bin picking applications, and a robot hand-mounted 3D ...

In the product assembly process, there is the work of supplying parts randomly stacked in a container to an automated machine. This is called bin picking. In response to the recent shortage of labor at manufacturing sites and the increase in labor costs, automation of this work is required. By realizing bin picking using 3D sensors and industrial robots, it is possible to manufacture a wide variety of products using the same system, and it is possible to reduce the cost and time of the start-up of the production line. At this time, in order to realize the same speed as a human, it is important ...

The Inspection System Division has traditionally performed 3D measurement of printed mounting boards and inspected them according to quantified quality standards. AOI (Automated Optical Inspection) and AXI (3D-CT method) inspect the shape of solder. The automated x-ray inspection, Q-upNavi, analyzes...

The wetting inspection of solder on components is the most important part of the board appearance inspection. However, solder forms various shapes because of the shape of electrodes, pads, and land. In addition, it is difficult to correctly measure the solder shape due to phenomena, such as shadows, and secondary reflections...

In recent years, the cost of labor for high-quality workers has been rising in Japan and other countries that have shifted from manufacturing to services, and there is a growing need to automate robots in medium- to low-volume production site, which has been done mainly by hand. Therefore, we focused on the kitting process, which is essential in the pre-assembly process of medium- and low-volume production, and examined the feasibility of ...

At the manufacturing site, it is necessary to improve processing accuracy while maintaining and improving productivity. As a result, in recent years, variations and fluctuations in materials and machines at manufacturing sites cannot be ignored. At the manufacturing site, in order to suppress such disturbance effects, various control...

We report on the development of a highly reliable safety system that ensures that the equipment continues to operate while maintaining safety functions without making emergency stops due to system errors caused by soft errors. As semiconductor devices become more highly integrated and miniaturized, transient bit errors (soft errors) in memory are a problem....

In order to enable persons and robots to work in the same shared space at manufacturing sites, robot trajectory planning technologies have been developed for robots to avoid collisions with persons during operation. However, by conventional technologies, since the operation must be temporarily stopped before the robot performs collision avoidance,...

In the manufacturing industry, it is important to identify the optimal production conditions using statistical methods, such as design of experiments. However, the number of experiments is often reduced through the use of knowledge and other means, which leads to lack of accuracy in the response surface model (RSM) for predicting product quality....

Rapidly changing market needs have resulted in the demand for shorter launching times for production facilities. In conventional methods where only physical machines were used, production facility launches took longer because of stand-by time and teaching positions and orientations of robots. A virtual launching...

In recent years, due to soaring labor costs and the spread of a new type of coronavirus, there has been an increasing demand to save labor at the production sites. However, the need for industrial robots, especially vertical articulated robots, has been increasing as one of the laborsaving measures,...

In an imaging system with multi-CH lighting, this paper addresses the issue of optimizing the lighting conditions and the imaging conditions of the camera so that they are suitable for visual inspections. The proposed method establishes a technique for accurately simulating an image of a workpiece...

Traditionally, system behaviors has been expressed by creating activity and sequence diagrams in the system design of the PCB Inspection System. However, it is difficult to specify the abnormal behaviors of the systems in the design phase to prevent the inclusion of defects as the system becomes highly functional...

Various interactive manufacturing systems are developing to enable humans and robots to produce products in cooperation. For safety designers who design the safety of interactive manufacturing systems face difficulties to select a practical safety design method. The origin of this issue is a lack of appropriate safety standards...

The environment for constructing information systems, such as faster networks, lower costs, and larger storage capacity, is becoming available at the production site. With these technologies, OMRON realizes an information system that covers the sensor level using the open network IO-Link as a future factory. And the....

In this paper, we deal with the grasping points estimation for robotic bin picking. Usually, grasping points are estimated by using 3D CAD of the object to be grasped. However, it becomes difficult to estimate the grasping points for non-rigid objects....

In the visual inspection of the substrate, the crystal structure becomes irregular when the electrode is in the form of a thin film, causing an inconsistent color in the reflection characteristics when imaging is performed using coaxial lighting. The inconsistent....

In recent years, power outages and ignition accidents caused by abnormal temperature rises in panel components due to aging of facilities have been increasing. Consequently, for example....

There are two problems that arise of generating more wiring work for sensors with a tooling change in high-mix low-volume production and increasing downtime by breaking. Therefore, the introduction of a wireless interface is considered. There....

In recent years, it has been necessary to improve operational efficiency and reduce costs by using AI and IoT in the manufacturing industry to reduce the impacts from the shortage of skilled workers and increased labor costs. To meet these requirements, the amount....

Recently, manufacturers have some common issues such as highly developed manufacturing, complicated manufacturing, or manufacturing with few skilled people. They are trying to solve these issues by IoT technologies based on big-data which are...

In the manufacturing industry, there is lack of engineers who are responsible for maintenance, due to environmental changes such as a declining birth rate and an aging population. In addition, the existing equipment has becoming decrepit, so the frequency...

In the board mounting industry, there are an increasing number of parts and boards that are difficult to be insepected with AOI because solder is invisible. And high quality requirements such as bonding strength of the automobile industry and full surface...

In recent years, it has become important to make a full use of sensing data from control devices like sensors via new IT technology such as AI. To accelerate this, it is important to collect and transform ill-formed sensing data from control devices to...

With increasing high-mix low volume production in manufacturing industry, more flexible production facility is required for rearrangement of factory layout. Wireless pushbutton switch requires no signal line and no power supply line by internal...

In recent years, in the manufacturing industry, the need to utilize AI (Artificial Intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) at the manufacturing site continues to rise in order to improve availability of facilities and stably produce high quality...

At the manufacturing site, the labor force is chronically short. In the future, productivity is expected to decline due to a decrease in skilled technicians, and there is a demand for labor saving. In view of these backgrounds, we are promoting labor saving by...

Along with the recent global trend, consumer needs in the market are getting more diversified, and manufacturers are required to produce new products in a short cycle. Manufacturing companies have installed new equipment and added new production...

In recent years, the need has continually risen for the introduction of AI and the internet of things (IoT) on manufacturing floors. It allows manufacturers to contain the impact of skilled worker shortages and surging labor costs, while...

In the automotive industry, the increase in the number of recalls is a problem. In order to respond quickly when a recall occurs, there is likewise an increasing importance of individual part identification to identify when and where all...

In recent years, manufacturing companies need to respond the request of “multi-variety, variable-volume production” in the era of diversified needs. Along with that, they also need to develop safety systems that can be flexibly modified...

In production lines, stable operation of machines is one of the most important factors so that it is required to have scheduled maintenance at the right timing. In most maintenance scenes, maintenance personnel will...

In recent years, the importance of traceability is increasing to respond to quality problems such as recall of automobile industry. In order to realize traceability and fulfill its social responsibility, companies...

In this paper, we propose a technique to detect various defects in uniform background objects (hairline, satin, etc.) in visual inspection system. “Human resources shortage” and “ diversification of consumer needs...

Conventional triangulation method has been the mainstream for displacement sensors, but on leading-edge manufacturing of customers, there have been the problems of the tuning difficulties when setting by the...

Recently, manufacturers of printed circuit boards are required more high quality and more cost competitiveness. Therefore the manufacturing lines must keep high quality autonomously without human skills and work.Omron...

The equipment maintenance and production management for manufacturing, which have been dependent on experience and knowledge of workers, are being improved by AI, IoT, and big data. It is necessary to collect and analyze...

Recently, activities of productivity improvement have been attempted at production sites with predictive approaches. Cloud-based machine monitoring systems were once introduced but were not prevailing due to cost...

To solve various control problems in the manufacturing process, Omron pursues advanced integrated control technology of ILO(Input-Logic-Output). In addition to providing ILO devices capable of high-speed and highprecision...