Rosemont, Ill. — Dutch rotomolding firm Pentas Moulding BV sees artificial intelligence leading to big changes in its factory.
The 150-employee company has already started linking AI to cameras at its workstations, where it can guide workers in a wide variety of assembly tasks needed for the firm's technical parts. It envisions quickly going beyond that, though, with AI analyzing reams of company data and functioning as a talking assistant to managers and line workers, developing schedules and weighing in on strategic questions like when the company might need new capacity.
In a presentation and separate interview at the Rotoplas 2024 show, sponsored by the Association of Rotational Molders and held Sept. 24-26 in Rosemont, Pentas executives described how they hope AI will enhance the competitiveness of their Almelo, Netherlands, factory.
Their efforts are just beginning, and the first rollout has been aimed at quality control for assembly workstations, where they use what's called an AI "vision model" system that links cameras to software. A screen at the station tells employees the next step in the assembly of a particular part, and the camera and software then watch the employee and tell them if the work is not being done correctly or if a step was missed.
"On a daily basis, we change over 40 different molds, so that team gets challenged a lot by every new part going through there," Marthijn Koorn, commercial director, told a Rotoplas audience. "One of our major challenges in rotational molding, for us, is how to keep up with the quality."
The company runs a paperless factory floor with digital manuals. Supervisors have been checking part quality and giving feedback, but Koorn said the company sees AI as a logical evolution. "We think with artificial intelligence we are able to set the next step in this process," he said.