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AI-based digitization of technical drawings for process automation
Introduction
Product examples:
Software solutions
Value creation:
Service,
Production & supply chain
Development stage:
Market-ready/productive use
Company size:
1 - 250 employees
Region:
Bavaria
What are the challenges that needed to be solved?
A manufacturing company usually receives technical drawings in a data format that is difficult for computers to understand (PDF or image). This means a lot of manual effort in process steps that require information from these drawings; E.g. in the feasibility study, preparation of offers, or production planning.
Werk24s KI interprets technical drawings as PDF or image and provides information on dimensions, shape and position tolerances, geometry, material and more in just a few seconds.
Werk24's Artificial Intelligence reads the drawings in a similar way to a human and provides the results in a machine-processable manner within a few seconds. This results in both potential savings in existing processes and new business opportunities.
How can the Industrie 4.0 approach be described?
Werk24 has been developing artificial intelligence since 2017, which is provided as a SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) solution. The software accepts all common image formats as input, as well as PDF. A few seconds later, the information required for the process step is available.
The interpretation of a text field is mostly trivial for humans - but it has long been a challenge for machines. In this case, for example, the drawing number is not explicitly named and it is only clear through a process of elimination that 2741-B-521 must be the drawing number. Werk24s KI is able to draw these conclusions and thus understand text fields even if they do not follow a standard.
The application enables manufacturing companies to automate a large part of their processes and thus continue to approach their customers.
The Werk24 integration enables, for example, a customer to tell in a few seconds whether (i) the requested part can be manufactured with their own machines, (ii) what price can be offered and (iii) which delivery window can be displayed.
In-house, the Werk24 solution relieves work preparation. The automatic feasibility check sorts out non-feasible requests directly. The parts classification enables the automatic filling of the configuration table for price calculation.
Werk24's solution is specifically developed for mechanical engineering and thus offers a multitude of advantages over traditional character recognition. For example, two-line tolerances are usually misinterpreted by OCR software. Werk24 understands the meaning of dimensions and tolerances, applies general tolerances to non-toleranced dimensions, translates fits and much more.
Werk24 relies on a deep integration of machine learning algorithms with an associated expert system. The combination of these technologies makes it possible to process a wide range of drawings and deliver results that have been checked for both consistency and plausibility.
What can others learn from it?
Werk24 builds on the open exchange with partners. Especially when further information is to be extracted from technical drawings, we work very closely with users. In some cases, this means that extensions can be implemented in just a few weeks.
