Kyoto-based OMRON Corporation, a leader in the field of automation based on its core technology of ‘Sensing & Control + Think’, releases its new V440-F Series Code Readers. The new code readers provide best-in-class accuracy and can read very small codes that accelerate adoption of IoT at manufacturing sites. V440-F can establish a sophisticated production traceability system that leads to visualization, analysis, and improvement of products and the entire production process. This helps enhance quality control and equipment effectiveness.
Manufacturers have been using product traceability for counterfeit prevention and recall tracking. However, in the recent years, social interest in safety and security has increased considerably. Boosting productivity and quality by tracking a history of production processes through IoT and utilizing it for manufacturing site improvement has become a trend now.
Automotive and electronic component industries need high reliability. As parts become smaller and smaller with few becoming difficult to distinguish with the human eye. There is a rising need for integrated management of even such small parts from the arrival of materials through the manufacturing process to the shipment of products. One of common approaches to traceability is to mark very small 2D codes on parts and manage individual identification information recorded in these codes. However, this requires not only high-accuracy code reading capabilities allowing the recognition of minute 2D codes, but also the deployment of an advanced vision system by skilled engineers and associated investment in integration and commissioning time.
OMRON’s V440-F Series perfectly addresses these issues. It provides both highest accuracy in its class, and compactness and configuration flexibility by combining advanced code reader technology from OMRON MICROSCAN SYSTEMS and image capture technology from OMRON SENTECH. The new series can recognize very small codes along with other difficult-to-read 2D codes with simple setup through a web browser. It also offers connectivity to factory networks through a POE (Power-Over-Ethernet) connection. The V440-F Series’ imaging flexibility is also an advantage when 2D codes need to be read at a long distance, across a wide area or on parts moving at high speed. OMRON offers traceability systems that integrate the V440-F Series and the industry’s most advanced industrial automation devices for capture of 4M information, which is essential for quality control at production sites, in addition to conventional item-level product traceability.
Such advanced traceability systems can improve quality and productivity by linking individual parts with manufacturing process data and leveraging such information for process optimization and control.
OMRON set forth a strategic concept called “innovative-Automation” consisting of three innovations or “i’s” — “integrated” (control evolution), “intelligent” (development of intelligence by ICT), and “interactive” (new harmonization between people and machines). By offering traceability solutions leveraging IoT technology through the V440-F Series, OMRON will address facilitating the construction of traceability solutions for data management, inspection, and transportation. OMRON accelerates the creation of an “intelligent” manufacturing site — key to the realization of “innovative-Automation” — together with its client companies.
