Macnica ATD Europe is one of the world’s largest distributors of semiconductors founded in 1972. It combines several decades of B2B semiconductor and imaging distribution experience with a vast product range covering memories, GNSS, IoT, and power management ICs as well as a focus on image sensors, optics, interface circuits, IPs, imaging processors, cables, and OLED micro displays; and a growing portfolio of ready to use AI solutions.
Easy Engineering: Which are your best-selling products / solutions?
MACNICA: Macnica is a global corporation headquartered in Japan with more than 80 locations worldwide. Multiple branches of Macnica are involved in promoting differentiated solutions for dedicated customer base or specific markets. In this context Macnica is engaged with many disruptive technologies and emerging solutions supporting areas like autonomous driving, retail stock predictive maintenance, smart city integration, braintech, AI driven production automation, smart sensors or hardware products as a backbone for offered solutions. We believe all the solutions and products offered by Macnica are successful in areas with great potential to further grow, driven by technological industry transition towards Flexible Consumption Models (FCM) which are also known as “as-a-Service” models. Macnica ATD Europe (MAE) unites the European Macnica operations.
E.E: Why do users choose your products / solutions?
MACNICA: Our product portfolio provides answers to changing customer expectations. Technology customers today are increasingly favoring flexible consumption models (FCMs) over traditional product purchases, as FCM or “as-a-Service” offerings usually require less upfront cost, transfer risk of ownership away from the customer, and align payment to consumption, providing demonstrable and measurable business value.
E.E: What special features do your products / solutions have?
MACNICA: Macnica ATD Europe (MAE) solutions portfolio includes InnerEye, icetana, Retrocausal, ADI OtoSenseand Asus IoT. Each of these solutions oriented products has its own unique attributes.
Retrocausal Pathfinder AI software guides, analyzes and optimizes assembly processes. It automatically builds computational models of a complex physical task from just a handful of demonstrations recorded by of-the-shelf web cameras. Once the customized model is built, the Pathfinder software analyzes the job status from the live video feed to guide a worker through the task, provide independent training and quality assurance analytics. Pathfinder alerts on unexpected variability in process times, and traces assembly mistakes through a line. The platform provides real-time digital work instructions and alerts to help the operator avoiding assembly mistakes and provides analytics to improve processes. By this, Pathfinder minimizes rework and scrap costs through reduction of assembly mistakes by up to 60%. Pathfinder helps to improve productivity through analysis of cycle-times, step-level statistics, variations and non-value added activities. Through video traceability for the line Pathfinder allows to find root cause of encountered issues through ability to analyze every assembly step.
The Smart Motor Sensor (SMS) by ADI OtoSense is a leader in predictive maintenance for electric motors. The AI-based, full turnkey hardware and software solution allows for 24/7 condition-based monitoring of electric motors. It presents information in a clear way, telling the customers what the problem is and how to fix it. ADI OtoSense SMS optimizes production environments and reduces breakdowns using robust condition-based monitoring hardware and software providing benefits such as lowering asset maintenance costs, extending equipment life, and increasing uptime.
E.E: Tell us a short tutorial of how a task is done more efficiently with one of your products / solutions.
MACNICA: Since Macnica ATD Europe is currently introducing ADI OtoSense into the portfolio which may still be less known to our customers – let’s take a chance to introduce its’ operation by the following use cases:
- https://otosense.analog.com/resource/use-case-builtspace-smart-buildings/
- https://otosense.analog.com/resource/use-case-pharmaceutical/
- https://otosense.analog.com/resource/use-case-food-market/
- https://otosense.analog.com/resource/use-case-energy-industry-power-producers/
E.E: How can users work more sustainable with your products / solutions?
MACNICA: To give a good and easy example we may come back to ADI OtoSense SMS for the following testimonials describing customer user experience:
“Basically, we are informed by ADI OtoSense solution when we need to perform the maintenance of the critical components of the electric motor – thus we can extend its operation time and avoid sudden and unexpected customer system down time of critical equipment operation.”
“The SMS device from ADI OtoSense allows us to efficiently monitor the motors of important machines in our power generation process, such as gas turbine cooling fans, hydraulic oil control pumps, or closed-circuit refrigeration pumps. In this way, we eliminate preventive work and optimize the measurement of manual vibrations, saving man-hours of maintenance and preventing operators from accessing dangerous places or high elevations.”
Furthermore, to what we just presented, in case you have complex tasks only human experts can achieve today, and if you want to build better AI models, check out InnerEye. InnerEye uses EEG measured brain waves to fuse human intelligence and computers. It leverages the fusion of human neural processing and deep artificial neural networks to enable quick and accurate visual content review, real-time AI training and validation, and the establishment of a unique human-machine interface for connected user applications. This unparalleled approach is realized in two product solutions. Sensei features EEG reading of human consciousness and judgment to teach the AI; and senses + focusses on EEG reading people’s emotional state such as concentration on task, interest, fatigue and reacting to any changes in concentration by giving an alert.
Macnica ATD Europe exhibits at Automatica 2023 in Munich from June 27th to June 30th, where we will demonstrate all above introduced solutions ADI OtoSense, Retrocausal, InnerEye. We welcome all visitors at our booth in the hall B5, booth 530.