ThinkIQ, a supplier of digital manufacturing software-as-a-service (SaaS) technologies, recently received investments from Mitsubishi Corp. to accelerate digital transformation with smart manufacturing technologies in industrial supply chains. The focus of this investment by Mitsubishi, the terms of which were not disclosed, will focus on industrial applications in Japan.
The open smart manufacturing platform from ThinkIQ was created in accordance with U.S. and European government smart manufacturing and Industry 4.0 initiatives as well as global standards bodies.
According to ThinkIQ, its SaaS platform delivers visibility to the manufacturing shop floor across each tier of complex supply chains through secure connections to both legacy and smart equipment. Leveraging this equipment data, along with IoT sensors and OT (operations technology) and IT systems, the ThinkIQ platform can reportedly bring all relevant data into a single analytics platform to provide context, meaning and discoverability for supply chain and manufacturing operations.
A key facet of the platform is ThinkIQ Vision. The company says this technology uses vision-processing software, combined with artificial intelligence/machine learning capabilities, to turn standard shop floor cameras into sensors that eliminate blind spots across equipment, materials and people to enhance the available data for continuous operations intelligence.
"Our team has spent years driving thought leadership around a digital transformation strategy for the manufacturing sector, as well as doing research and diligence to find the right partner to drive adoption of those strategies into our industrial supply chains,” said Yoshiyuki Watanabe, division COO of Mitsubishi Corp. “We expect ThinkIQ's solutions to have a major impact on manufacturers to help improve yield, quality, safety and compliance while dramatically reducing waste and environmental impact.”
