Why medical device manufacturers like Ward Automation trust Cognex AI-based machine vision

Ward Automation, based out of Sligo, Ireland, is a leading manufacturer of world-class customized automation solutions for the medical device and pharmaceutical industries. Its innovative manufacturing solutions, such as automating the pre-filled syringe manufacturing process and verifying label batch data, rely on Cognex’s machine vision technology to help customers increase throughput of high-quality products, reduce product defects or costly product recalls, and achieve traceability throughout the supply chain. All its processes and procedures follow Good Automated Manufacturing Practice (GAMP5) guidelines.
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Learn more about how Cognex serves the pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturing industries at: www.cognex.com/industries/pha...
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TRANSCRIPT:
Kenny Ward, Business Development Manager, Ward Automation:
The core thing that has to be right in our machines is that the quality of the machines has to be perfect. Product coming off has to be thoroughly inspected and it has to be right. So if defective product gets in the market, it's a huge issue for our customers, which means it's a huge issue for us. And there's a risk of customers dying after the risk of them having drastic side effects.
In medical device manufacturing, the end of line inspection would have been done by operators and operators inherently make mistakes so they can let products out into the market that haven't been manually inspected properly. And with the advances of vision technology over the years, and it's now got to the stage where it's very easy to put in a high end vision inspection systems.
Cognex helps us meet our customers needs by two things primarily. One is defect detection. Second would be OCR, OCV batch traceability. The Cognex vision inspections systems are very reliable and pick up a very, very high rate of defects. Defect detection can typically be inspected to 99.9% reliability. So we've been working with Cognex since the early 2000s. Cognex products are known for being very high quality, very reliable, and that is one of the reasons that we use them.
Aaron Ward, Controls Engineer, Ward Automation:
I do get excited by coming into work to work on new projects. We've started using Cognex AI solutions, especially deep learning side. For challenging applications that normally we wouldn't be able to give a reliable solution using standard vision tools. We've noticed now with Cognex deep learning tools that they can pick up on these defects that previously we wouldn't be able to detect using standard vision tools. When we work with Cognex, we see that they're innovating machine vision. They seem to be always coming out with something new, and it's always exciting. It's opening up new opportunities for us. We find them easy to use, we just find them very reliable and they’re one of the industry leaders.
Kenny Ward:
One of our core principles in the company is innovation, and we work closely with Cognex. We constantly see that they're coming out with new types of products that are at the forefront of cutting edge. Quality of the product coming off the line and going out to the customer has been increased drastically by all the additional checks and the automation improvements that we've put in place. Cognex is widely used in the medical device manufacturing industry. A lot of our customers would standardize on Cognex systems and our own in-house engineers, they work very closely with the Cognex team. They're all trained up on Cognex systems.
What the advantage of using an industry standard is that when we install our equipment, our customers typically may have some internal engineers that are also familiar with the Cognex software. When I think of Cognex, I think of a company that's forward thinking and comes up with innovative solutions, collaborative experts, cutting edge and forward thinking.
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The world’s leading provider of vision systems, software, sensors, and industrial barcode readers used in manufacturing automation. Cognex vision helps companies improve product quality, eliminate production errors, lower manufacturing costs, and exceed consumer expectations for high quality products at an affordable price.
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