AI Solution for the manual and repetitive assembly lines

The Pathfinder Apollo is a disruptive and unprecedented solution brought by Macnica ATD Europe.

The Pathfinder platform is an AI solution, developed by Retrocausal, which is a leader in the market of intelligent solutions for the industry.

The solution significantly reduces errors in manual and repetitive work on the assembly line through intelligent video monitoring.

The platform is composed of an Artificial Intelligence (AI)-enabled camera which, upon detecting an error in an operator's task on an assembly line, triggers audible and visual alerts.

In addition, Pathfinder continuously performs time studies on assembly processes, enabling greater control and management over the manual activities performed in a manufacturing unit.

Human errors are responsible for 68% of the quality issues in manufacturing assembly lines.

Even though operators work tirelessly and repetitively, inexperience, fatigue, new processes, and production complexity can often lead to error.

Pathfinder's AI solution automatically builds computational models of a complex task, such as an assembly activity, given only a small set of recorded demonstrations of the task.

Once that model is built, Pathfinder accurately tracks the job status from the live video to guide an operator through the task, provide independent training, and perform process analysis.

Pathfinder provides audible and visual alerts to help the operator avoid assembly errors, while its analytics capability identifies non-value-added activities in processes, unexpected variability in lead times, and tracks assembly errors on a production line.

The platform observes and collects data from 100% of the assemblies made, eliminating the concept of "sampling" in production process quality control.

In addition, Pathfinder allows for individualized and automated training per workstation.

The platform provides statistics per individual workstation in the analysis dashboard.

These statistics include average cycle time, throughput, error rates, as well as highly detailed measurements that relate to step execution time and errors.

This information helps engineers and managers identify non-value-added activities, find the cause of assembly problems, and optimize the production process.

Pathfinder Apollo also offers the option to automatically store video records of individual assembly line cycles. These records are identified by the product serial number.

Therefore, if a defective product reaches the end of the process or if a recall event happens, these records prove themselves to be extremely valuable for improving the process and minimizing the extent of the damage.

Want to learn more about this AI solution that is already transforming the manual, repetitive production line? Contact us at marketing.mae@macnica.com.