Refrigerators that automatically trigger supply orders when eggs or milk are low. Heating systems and lighting that can be conveniently controlled by smartphone. Smart devices such as self-driving cars are to simplify our daily life in the future. The Internet of Things (IoT) is quickly becoming a household term; a Google search for it produces more than 30 million hits. The IoT will not only change everyday life but transform the way things are manufactured. With the exchange of large quantities of data between systems, a (still mostly silent) revolution is underway in the production processes of many industries. Other sectors will certainly follow. One reason is that the IoT enables machines, in the midst of the manufacturing process, to make decisions crucial to product quality and safety – and to do it more rapidly, reliably and economically than ever before.

First contracts soon to be signed
In Mirtec, YXLON has found a strong partner for the development and marketing of SmartLoop. In the past two years, intensive groundwork was done to win market share: The SmartLoop concept was awarded a patent, and the first demonstrator was presented at various trade shows in Germany, Japan and Korea, which dramatically raised awareness of the YXLON brand among the manufacturers of mobile device components. Talks were begun with component makers, and yielded results: Contracts with promising prospective customers are expected to be signed in the first half of 2017, and further exciting projects are in the pipeline.

This high degree of autonomy of smart machines is a boon to manufacturers of parts for digital cameras, laptop computers and smartphones who use the IoT-based YXLON solution, SmartLoop. The new application combines YXLON's two- and three-dimensional x-ray systems for non-destructive testing with the 3D system from Mirtec, a leading vendor of automated optical inspection systems.

The advantages of this innovative solution are compelling: Thanks to real-time communication, measurements and calculated data are rapidly and efficiently exchanged between YXLON systems and the purely optical inspection systems from Mirtec via a central information management system. This makes it possible to obtain better information about manufacturing processes or individual pieces during production and to act on it directly as required. SmartLoop indicates not just which production parts fail the inspection but also what to do with them. Should non-functioning components of an assembly be replaced, thus requiring rework, or must the whole piece be scrapped? The data exchange of different inspection technologies for defect detection using SmartLoop makes it possible to improve production processes, reduce scrap, increase throughput and lower costs – in short, improve production yields and profitability. SmartLoop thus delivers on key goals of Industry 4.0. The end consumer too stands to benefit from this trend, through lower prices for reliable products.