A Concept for Autonomous Quality Control for Core Inspection in Remanufacturing
Jan-Philipp Kaiser, Simon Lang, Marco Wurster, Gisela Lanza
Abstract
Efforts to establish a sustainable circular economy and in particular Remanufacturing, which maintains the added value of products at a high level, are increasing. The overall Remanufacturing process is characterized by a high degree of uncertainty and therefore manual labor. This also applies to core inspection processes, which determine the condition of the returning core and allow for decisions upon its reusability and quality grade. Looking at the current state of research, it is noticeable that a systematic analysis of challenges for automation of visual core inspection and a successful implementation is missing. In this paper, complexity drivers and challenges are derived and requirements for future inspection and quality assurance in Remanufacturing are defined. The concept of autonomous visual core inspection is introduced and illustrated based on a use case. By incorporating approaches of artificial intelligence into inspection systems, handling of multidimensional uncertainty inherent in Remanufacturing may be successful using the proposed concept. Thus, automation in the present use case but also the adoption to similar use cases in Remanufacturing can be accomplished.