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Victor Azamfirei

Victor Azamfirei has a licentiate degree in Innovation and Design from Mälardalen University and is currently pursuing a PhD in the same topic. Before that he worked in the automotive industry as an application engineer using his knowledge gained from a MSc in Production and BSc in Product Design and Realisation. General experiences include application of automation, quality improvement, design, human factors, and system thinking.

About Victor's thesis

No system is perfect or free of uncertainties (defects). The quality of products should still be considered to secure the gain of customers and market share. Traditional quality methods, such as quality inspection, suffer from significant limitations in highly customised small batch production. For quality inspection to remain fundamental for Zero-Defect Manufacturing (ZDM), an increase in flexibility, speed, availability and reliability is needed.

Recent developments in robot cognition and sensor systems have enabled robots to carry out perception tasks they were previously unable to do. If robots could perform in-line quality inspection, defective components might be prevented from continuing to the next production stage. The objective of this thesis is to expand the current knowledge of robotic in-line quality inspection systems to support the achievement of ZDM. To fulfil this aim, this thesis adopts a mixed-methods research approach to qualitative and quantitative studies, as well as theoretical and empirical ones.