A beverage bottling operation, three high-speed lines
Manufacturing
The shape of this problem
Too much arrives to check it all, so you sample
The problem
End-of-line quality relied on manual spot checks at line speeds above 20,000 units/hour, so human sampling caught only a fraction of defects. Defective pallets occasionally reached distributors, and defect spikes were only discovered hours later through downstream complaints.
What we built
We ran a short defect-data audit before proposing cameras, which showed the recurring costly defects were three specific failure modes - underfill, cocked caps, skewed labels - not the twelve in the QA manual. We deployed cameras on the highest-throughput line first, targeting only those three types, flagging rather than auto-rejecting while operators validated every flag for weeks before enabling automated diversion.
What moved
| Measure | Before | After |
|---|---|---|
| Defect escape rate to distribution | † | down 84% |
| Detection latency | hours | under 2 minutes, enabling same-shift correction |
| Customer returns tied to quality | † | down 61% over the following quarter |
† Measured against the prior level of the same measure. The source publishes the size of the movement, not the figure it moved from.
Defect escape rate to distribution
Measured against the client's own prior process, indexed to 100. The source publishes the size of the movement, not the absolute figure it moved from.
Figures are drawn from the practice's own delivery records for the engagement named, measured against the process that preceded it. They have not been through third-party audit, and none is presented as an average across clients.
Every vendor wanted to sell us a suite catching everything - but three defects were 90% of our real cost, and solving those first is what made the business case obvious.Plant Quality Manager
- Service line
- Inspection & Safety Vision AI
Start here
Which of the four is yours?
Tell us the documents and the monthly volume and we will send the two closest records, with the proof behind each and the honest note where the match is partial.
You get a reply within one working day, from the engineer who would do the work - not a sales sequence.