Modernization meets the factory
As manufacturing modernizes and automates, the company needed something that would provide real-time monitoring, accurately identify safety risks, and integrate seamlessly into their existing framework. The goal was not only compliance but also a proactive safety culture that could prevent incidents and optimize operational efficiency. The customer decided to take that technological leap with Linker Vision and their Observ platform.
As a first action, Linker Vision collaborated with the semiconductor manufacturing leader to understand their specific needs, pain points, and user journey. "We had interviews with the users to understand what their requirements were for the AI solution, their expectations, and their goal," said Cheng. This insight helped the company understand the best way to deploy Observ and deliver real-time video analytics on the edge.
Linker Vision explored several tools while researching what might work for their customer, but because their platform is built on Azure, it's a simple process to integrate other Azure technologies. From App Service, IoT Hub, and IoT Edge to Azure Machine Learning, they can seamlessly implement any number of tools into a customer's environment. For the manufacturer, Linker Vision also introduced Azure Active Directory to connect the account permission with the enterprise account.
Azure provided a scalable infrastructure for Observ that could process large volumes of data and run AI video analytics efficiently. "We don't need to own the data center construction," noted Lee. "We can focus on providing AI software solutions to our customers and leave all the infrastructure work to Azure."
Even though Linker Vision is an expert in their field, bringing AI to a factory floor is easier said than done. One bad camera angle can derail the results. "Once a model is deployed to one specific environment, it tends not to work well if you put it in another environment with a change of camera angle," said Lee. "That's the pain point currently in terms of deploying VisionAI models to the real world."
But Observ offers a continuous learning platform and data-centric approach that accounts for environmental context and diversity. The semiconductor manufacturer using Observ is tapping into its capabilities for their standard operating procedure and PPE detection, restricted area detection, camera screen availability detection, and people/vehicle counting. Meanwhile, the tool facilitates drift data collection, feeding valuable insights back into its data engine for continuous model improvement, retraining, and accuracy.
This intuitive, vision-based AI platform is helping customers stay ahead of safety issues—both increasing accuracy and reducing time spent managing and monitoring.