The major challenge in today's manufacturing industry is the absolute mastery of surface quality in real-time. Conventional inspection systems are no longer sufficient and are hindering the competitiveness.

The critical issues you face:

• The myth of real-time control: The absence of systems capable of immediately detecting and reacting to surface defects as they appear.

• Pseudo Defects: Your Automatic Surface Inspection Systems (ASIS) struggle to reliably classify difficult defects, especially those masked by physical conditions like oil or water.

• Operator stress: The complexity of quality data often forces the operator to make critical decisions in mere seconds, leading to costly errors.

• The AI Divide: Deep learning solutions are constrained by the lack of high-quality training data, a limited resource that is difficult to share.

Faced with these challenges, the European project SurfConInspect , financed by the EU RFCS programme , paves the way for zero-defect manufacturing in flat steel sheet production by implementing a new level of online surface quality control. It adopts a holistic approach incorporating new concepts for both surface defect measurement and the support of adequate control actions. 

For whom?

This workshop is aimed at professionals and managers in the manufacturing industry, particularly those involved in flat steel production and any manufacturing company involved in the continuous or batch production of materials where surface quality is critical.

In particular we welcome: 

• Quality and R&D managers aiming to achieve zero-defect production

• Line Operators and Supervisors dealing with automatic surface inspection systems

• Automation and IIoT Engineers interested in integrating detectors or devices like Augmented Reality (AR) .

Workshop Objective

To raise awareness among manufacturing SMEs about innovative surface inspection and quality control technologies, showing them how to integrate these into their processes to reduce defects, improve productivity, and strengthen their competitiveness.

This workshop will be held in hybrid mode: you can attend either on-site or remotely. A connection link will be sent to registered participants to facilitate their online participation.

The presentation language will be english

This event is organized within the framework of WalHub, the European Digital Innovation Hub (EDIH), which brings together experts to guide Walloon manufacturing companies in adopting digital technologies, thereby strengthening their competitiveness.

This session integrates the advanced expertise from the SurfConInspect project, which receives funding from the European RFCS (The Research Fund for Coal and Steel).