DEFECT PROPORTION OF DETECTION INITIAL RATE DETECTION RATE INSPECTOR 3 COMPLEXITY OF TIMES PAN OF PERFORMING o~ ________________________ o~ ______________________ __ -;. INSPECTION TASK -;. VISUAL INSPECTION Fagure 1. Trends in relations between the complexity of inspection tasks, defect detection rates (absolute and relative), and inspection time. Irrespective of the necessities described above, and with the excep­ tion of specific generic application systems (e.g., bare-board PCB inspection, wafer inspection, solder joint inspection, linewidth measure­ ment), vision systems are still not found frequently in today's electronics factories. Besides cost, some major reasons for this absence are: 1. The detection robustness or accuracy is still insufficient. 2. The total inspection time is often too high, although this can frequently be attributed to mechanical handling or sensing. 3. There are persistent gaps among process engineers, CAD en­ gineers, manufacturing engineers, test specialists, and computer vision specialists, as problems dominate the day-to-day interac­ tions and prevent the establishment of trust. 4. Computer vision specialists sometimes still believe that their contributions are universal, so that adaptation to each real problem becomes tedious, or stumbles over the insufficient availabIlity of multidisciplinary expertise. Whether we like it or not, we must still use appropriate sensors, lighting, and combina­ tions of algorithms for each class of applications; likewise, we cannot design mechanical handling, illumination, and sensing in isolation from each other.