In most factories, visual quality control is the job of one person standing at the end of the line. The method works for a long time, but it has two limits. The first is consistency: the same person cannot look with the same precision at the start and end of the day, and two different people will judge the same defect differently. The second is records: inspection by eye leaves no data behind, so nobody knows which defect occurs how often, or in which shift it increases.
Camera-based inspection can overcome both limits — but this work needs to be described honestly. What decides the success of computer vision projects is usually not the software but the quality of the image. The angle and colour of the lighting, the camera's position and resolution, the lens choice, line vibration and how the product passes in front of the camera directly determine the outcome. No model can extract good results from a badly lit image; in a well-built rig, most of the problem is already solved.
That is why we state our boundary plainly: a significant part of this work is a lighting and optics hardware job. Pan does the software and integration side, and works with a hardware partner on lighting and optics selection. We prefer to say this upfront, because in proposals that claim the whole job single-handedly, this part is usually handled last and in a hurry — and that is where the project gets stuck.
We structure the work accordingly. Feasibility comes first: whether the defect can be distinguished by camera is tested on real samples. If it cannot, we say so early and the work stops there — that is budget not spent. If it can, a sample set is collected, the rig is designed and installed on the line. This sequence prevents the project's most expensive mistake: discovering that the results fall short after the installation is already done.