Brent A. Fischthal, Koh Young, Head of Global Marketing Communications
Electronics manufacturers have long relied on Automated Optical Inspection (AOI) to ensure quality, but surface mount technology (SMT) challenges demand more than just defect detection. Shrinking components, increasing placement density, and rising material costs mean inspection must evolve into a proactive process control tool.
At the forefront of this transformation is Koh Young, which is redefining AOI by integrating its True 3D™ measurement-based inspection with artificial intelligence (AI) and machine-to-machine (M2M) communication. The result is a smarter, self-optimizing production solution that minimizes false calls, prevents defects, and pushes closer to zero defects.
Manufacturers are not just adopting AOI—they are expanding its role, using it before reflow to catch defects early, optimize processes in real-time, and leverage AI-powered inspection to drive efficiency and accuracy to unprecedented levels.
Catching Defects Before They Become Expensive Problems
While post-reflow AOI has been the standard for verifying solder joints and detecting placement errors, pre-reflow AOI has gained traction as a powerful tool for reducing costly rework and scrap.
Once a component has been soldered, correcting a defect becomes exponentially more expensive. Pre-reflow AOI allows manufacturers to detect missing, rotated, or misaligned components before soldering, preventing defects or scrap. It also identifies coplanarity issues or skewed placements that could result in open joints. By catching placement errors early, manufacturers significantly reduce costs. Ensuring that only properly assembled boards enter reflow or selective undeniably improves first-pass yield and enhances overall efficiency.
By integrating AOI before and after reflow, manufacturers create a two-step verification process that significantly improves yield, while minimizing waste.
Why is 3D AOI Essential?
As electronics advance, inspection must go beyond simple defect detection to become a reliable process control tool. Complex board designs, smaller components, and denser assemblies introduce challenges requiring highly precise and repeatable measurement capabilities.
The Zenith AOI, for example, provides accurate height, volume, and coplanarity measurements, ensuring defects like lifted leads, skewed placements, and insufficient solder are detected. By delivering metrology-level accuracy, it minimizes false calls and reduces manual inspection, resulting in more consistent, data-driven decision-making. Beyond defect detection, AOI generates trustworthy measurement data that helps engineers prevent errors before they occur. This makes it an essential part of smart manufacturing, feeding real-time inspection data into AI-driven solutions that continuously optimize printing and placement settings, ultimately driving zero-defect manufacturing. As SMT assemblies become more complex, AOI is no longer just a quality checkpoint—it is essential to ensure high yield, reliability, and efficiency in electronics manufacturing.
Smarter, Faster, More Accurate
Koh Young is transforming AOI from visual inspection into an AI-powered decision-making engine. Traditional AOI systems generate excessive false calls, requiring manual verification, but AI-powered defect classification minimizes these issues to improve efficiency and reduce operator intervention. AI also enables self-optimizing inspection, continuously refining AOI parameters to ensure higher first-pass yield and lower escape rates.
By integrating AI-driven automation, Koh Young’s Auto Programming (KAP) eliminates golden boards and reduces setup time by up to 70%. This allows engineers to focus on process efficiency rather than tedious programming and manual adjustments. Adaptive learning further ensures the system continuously improves, refining inspection based on real-time production data.
The Hub of Process Optimization
AOI is no longer an isolated quality check—it is a real-time data hub that helps optimize every stage of SMT assembly. By linking solder paste inspection (SPI) and AOI, manufacturers can verify the impact of solder printing errors and make necessary adjustments before defects spread downstream. When SPI identifies solder issues, AI-powered feedback adjusts stencil cleaning cycles, squeegee pressure, and printing speed to maintain an optimal print process.
AOI also plays a crucial role in mounter optimization. If the AOI identifies placement drift, AI-powered feedback corrects mounter offsets, ensuring components are placed accurately. This feedback system, enabled by Koh Young Process Optimizer (KPO) solutions, eliminates guesswork and enhances process repeatability, allowing manufacturers to maintain higher quality standards with minimal manual intervention.
AI-Powered AOI in Action
Historically, AOI systems have played a reactive role in defect detection, flagging issues after they occur. However, as manufacturers push toward smarter, more connected production lines, AOI is evolving into a proactive enabler of process control and defect prevention. Koh Young is leading this transformation with AI-powered smart factory solutions that go beyond inspection—optimizing print, placement, and defect classification. By leveraging 3D measurement, adaptive learning, and M2M connectivity, Koh Young is actively reducing false calls, fine-tuning process parameters, and preventing defects. These solutions ensure inspection is not just a checkpoint, but a critical component of autonomous process optimization, paving the way for zero-defect manufacturing.
KPO leverages AI to optimize print and placement processes, reducing defects and improving line efficiency. It analyzes SPI and AOI data in real-time to detect process trends, automatically adjusts printer and mounter settings to correct deviations, and utilizes AI-powered anomaly detection to identify early warning signs of process drift, helping to minimize potential defects before they escalate.
Koh Young Auto Programming (KAP) reduces programming time by up to 70% by using AI to recommend optimal AOI conditions. It minimizes operator intervention, improving consistency and reducing setup errors. Additionally, it continuously learns from results, refining inspection parameters to further simplify programming.
Smart Review further enhances AI-driven defect detection by minimizing false calls, reducing manual review time, and continuously refining defect detection models through incremental learning. A rule-based auto-classification system supports real-time defect analysis, reducing operator workload and improving decision consistency.
These solutions ensure that inspection not only finds defects but actively prevents them, driving toward a zero-defect future.
Zero Defects: The Next Frontier in SMT Manufacturing
By combining true 3D measurement, AI-powered analytics, and machine-learning process optimization, manufacturers are moving closer to zero defects. Pre-reflow AOI is now considered best practice, catching placement errors before they become costly defects. AI-powered inspection improves accuracy, reducing both false calls and escapes, while M2M connectivity is creating self-optimizing SMT lines, where AOI actively prevents defects in real time.
For manufacturers embracing the smart factory, AI-powered AOI is the key to unlocking higher yields, lower costs, and defect-free production. Koh Young’s advanced inspection solutions are at the forefront of this transformation, enabling manufacturers to achieve superior process control and set new standards for quality in electronics manufacturing.
