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Surface Inspection was founded in 1987 by Martin Coulthard, a computer vision expert, to develop bespoke automatic vision systems for the manufacturing industry. In 1989, following a request from a British tile manufacturer, Surface Inspection began the development of the Flawmaster tile inspection system. The first model, Flawmaster 1000, was such a success that by end of 1990 there were over 20 units inspecting biscuits for twice fired tiles in various ceramic factories. During the following few years the second generation of Flawmaster, the 2000 model, was developed and in 1994 there was the first installation on a glazed tiles production line. The same system entered the German market in 1996. Capitalizing on the commercial success of the first Flawmaster systems the company decided to expand its operations toward the two main tile manufacturing countries: in 1997 they opened the Spanish subsidiary in Castellon de la Plana, Surface Inspection S.L.U., while the following year Surface Inspection s.r.l., the Italian sales office, opened in the Sassuolo area. Given the success of the Flawmaster systems in the ceramic tile industry the company decided in 1996 to concentrate its efforts uniquely on tile inspection systems. The first results of this highly focused R&D work generated Flawmaster 3000 that was installed in large numbers installed in Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland and UK from 1999. The same year the Biscuitmaster system was introduced to the market, filling an important market niche: inspection of tiles before they are fired. Over the next few years this latest product has evolved to become the Processmaster, a system that helps increasing the amount of first class tiles by eliminating the defective tiles during the production process. In 2003 Surface Inspection launched the Flawmaster 4G that provided extra performance in terms of defect detection and tile classification. In 2005 SI was acquired by Nuova Fima to build a synergic group and in 2007 the Flawmaster 5G was launched introducing an innovative illumination system, leading edge cameras and processing platform. In the same year the number of engineers in the already strong customer service team was increased to 20 people to offer world wide service to all customers. To date the company boasts a total of over 600 installations in the most important tile manufacturing countries like: Brazil, Czech Republic, England, Germany, France, Holland, Hungary Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Italy, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Thailand, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Spain, Poland, South Africa and USA. At the same time the R&D team has been exploring new areas of applications for the technology to inspect different materials in order to expand the current applications beyond the ceramic tile industry. |