Ceramic Tiles Case Study Essay

Problem summary and introduction

To minimize quality problems of ceramic tiles manufacturers need a rational method of establishing a shade classification system for a tiles product and a way to apply that method consistently.
The shade of a tiles are combination of a number of visual characteristics of the tiles surface, including its distribution and the colour pattern of colour or decoration over the tiles surface. The tiles manufacturing process has many variables that can affect tiles shade, including material colours, quantity and mixing; a wide range of printing and other decoration effects; and firing conditions. Manufacturers can only get the ideal product of having a single shade for each product if they can control all of these process variables extremely well. In many cases, however, this control is not possible, and manufacturers must instead deal with the reality of classifying and sorting tiles by shade to increase their profitability.
The classifying and

Gradual changes are difficult for human inspectors to detect and it is possible that slight and progressive changes will not be noticed quickly. Additionally, it is particularly difficult for the human eye to accurately sort tiles into shades, with changing light conditions in a factory. Human decision is, as usual, influenced by expectations and prior knowledge. However this problem is not specific to structural defects. In many detection tasks for example, edge detection, there is a gradual transition from presence to absence. On the other hand, in “obvious” cases most naïve observers agree that the defect is there, even when they cannot identify the structure. The goal of the inspection is not to give a statistical analysis of the production but to classify every tiles into quality-constant batches. And set them according to their grade. These tasks are often referred to as visual