Teach the Factory to See: How Production, Manufacturing Engineering, and Quality Teams Make AI Inspection Dependable

What happens when a factory can detect defects faster, learn from every inspection, and turn quality data into better production decisions? AI vision can transform manufacturing, but installing a camera and training a model is not enough. Systems that perform well in a demonstration often struggle on the production floor, where lighting shifts, surfaces reflect, products vary, cycle times matter, and operators must trust the result. In Teach the Factory to See, Rajesh Iyengar presents a practical engineering-management framework for taking AI-powered visual inspection from promising pilot to dependable production system. Drawing on lessons from engaging hundreds of manufacturers, visiting factory floors, and building AI vision solutions for real production environments, Iyengar explains why successful inspection depends on much more than model accuracy. It requires alignment among quality standards, sensing, software, infrastructure, operators, economics, and management. Inside, you will learn how to: - Manage quality as a complete production system rather than an isolated inspection task - Define defects and acceptable variation before selecting technology - Move beyond the "golden image" approach to real-world product variation - Choose the right cameras, optics, models, edge architecture, and factory integration - Design for reflections, contamination, heat, changing materials, and other production realities - Evaluate false positives, false negatives, precision, recall, and rare defects - Connect AI inspection with PLCs, MES platforms, robotics, traceability, and control plans - Build operator and quality-engineer trust through evidence and shared decision-making - Measure operational value through labor, throughput, scrap, rework, OEE, total cost of ownership, and risk reduction - Scale quality control across products, lines, and plants without losing discipline >This is not a book about replacing people with algorithms. It is about amplifying human expertise with systems that can observe consistently, respond quickly, and help manufacturing teams make better decisions. Written for engineering managers, quality leaders, plant managers, manufacturing executives, production professionals, and automation teams, Teach the Factory to See offers a grounded roadmap for industrial quality control, production management, and responsible AI deployment. The factory does not need another impressive demonstration. It needs a system that works when production gets messy.