The trend toward miniaturization and low-profile design is accelerating in home electronics, including smartphones, gaming consoles and PCs. This has promoted the miniaturization and integration of semiconductors and electronic components, and generated demand for higher inspection accuracy. As high-mix low-volume production and cell production have become common and products have diversified, labor and costs for inspection are increasing.

Electronic components such as IC chips, resistors, capacitors, and transistors are so small that they sometimes must be inspected not only visually but also with microscopes. Labor increases exponentially along with this increase in parts to be inspected. This has led to significant increases in labor and facility costs and reduced production efficiency.

Machine vision has increasingly been introduced for inspection in production to remedy this situation. Machine vision is versatile and can perform multiple inspections simultaneously. They are suitable for the needs of the electronic device industry where high-mix low-volume production and cell production are becoming common.

With the recent availability of high-pixel cameras and high-performance image processing systems, various operations can now be automated, such as appearance inspection, dimension inspection, character/2D code-based identification, and positioning/alignment. Using machine vision also facilitates data management. The ability to build a product management database and conduct factor analysis based on past NG products helps to improve facilities and quality. The following are typical examples of how machine vision has been utilized in the electronic device industry.