Real time control is not just for the factory floor. It has begun to appeal to enterprise management wanting to gain competitive advantage. While very few organizations are there yet, the ones who are have the capacity to do things that have never been done before.
While the ability of a computer to look at a person’s face and compare it to one in a database is fairly common, current technology can go much farther. A system can now look at an individual and make some conclusions about that person, and even his or her state of mind.
The winner of the 2009 Control Engineering panel design award is CP Packaging of Appleton, WI. The company’s design for a plant-floor machine control panel reduces space on the machine, provides easy access for maintenance, reduces costs, and saves build-out and installation time.
Operators sometimes employ clever and often low-tech strategies for bypassing a vision-based label quality-control system. Sometimes they simply shut off the system and let products go through. Other times, they place an image of a good product in front of the camera to allow the lesser quality labels to go by. Makers of a global brand o…