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Manufacturing counterfeits is a thriving business with hundreds of products duplicated and sold across the sold as original ones. At the individual level, the consequences are grave, particularly when the products in question belong to the automobile industry or pharmaceuticals. Object identification technologies, to date, haven't been able to contain the menace of counterfeits. Alitheon, a machine vision technology company says using its FeaturePrint technology, all you need is a camera to capture the picture and identify each and every object uniquely. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Roei Ganzarski, President and CEO of Alitheon.
Alitheon provides the missing connection between the physical and digital worlds. Its FeaturePrint is an advanced machine-vision technology that creates for items and products, what fingerprints are for people – a one-of-a-kind, unique identifier that does not require you to mark, modify or add anything to the object. Using just a camera, FeaturePrinting enables authentication, identification, and traceability of individual items out of millions of similar objects. With FeaturePrint, counterfeits are avoided, misidentification of parts is eliminated, and the use of wrong products is minimized.
Alitheon was launched in 2016 by a combined team of experts in advanced mathematics and machine vision. The goal was to tackle the real $2.3 trillion problem of counterfeit goods, untraceable items, and poor identification of physical products.
The first chapter of our story, called "Something from Nothing", was about creating the technology and proving to ourselves that it worked. With many a mistake along the way and more than a few proverbial rabbit holes, we were ready to move on to our next chapter – "Going to Market." We are now introducing our amazing FeaturePrint solution to customers, enabling them to do things they could only imagine before.
The world has a growing counterfeiting and traceability problem – from knock-off consumer goods to counterfeit computer chips, fake pharmaceuticals, and nuclear reactors with counterfeit parts in them. No one is escaping this problem. $2.3 trillion is lost each year to this even though $140 billion is wasted trying to fight it. Using just a photo, Alitheon provides the last standard needed in authentication, identification, and tracing of physical items, parts, and products. The "traditional" solutions used for item authentication, including bar codes, serial numbers, hologram stickers, and RFID tags to name a few, are no longer able to keep up with the counterfeiters. These can be obscured, detached from packaging, or themselves be faked themselves.
Alitheon has pioneered a new solution that uses the item itself as the basis for identification using optical AI technology. Similar in philosophy to fingerprinting, where each person has a one-of-a-kind fingerprint that identifies them with no other information needed, the Alitheon solution called "FeaturePrint", can identify any manufactured product and verify its authenticity, identify one of the many, and trace it, all with the simple snap of a digital photo. It prevents counterfeiting not by aimlessly trying to detect counterfeits but by irrefutably identifying originals.
Utilizing its patented optical AI, Alitheon's FeaturePrint technology can identify distinguishing details in the surface structure of any physical item and store its profile using cloud computing services. The item can then be identified and authenticated at a later time by matching the profile with imagery that can be captured using a standard-issue smartphone.
FeaturePrint technology enables authentication, identification, and traceability of individual items out of millions of similar objects. This technology has been a breakthrough for industries that have repeatedly fallen prey to counterfeiters, including the aerospace, automotive, semiconductor, luxury goods, and pharmaceutical industries – among others.
We were challenged by an automotive company (not at liberty to be disclosed) to track and trace auto parts as they were being manufactured from flat sheet metal into finished car parts. This stamping process puts tremendous strains and stresses on the metal as it deforms to the final shape of the auto part being made. Because the FeaturePrint technology relies on an image of the item, overcoming the inherent changes that happen to metal in this process was challenging. The result was 100% success. The technology was able to take a single image of a flat sheet of metal, and then identify an auto part that came from that sheet with yet another single image. Why does this matters: manufacturing and production lines worldwide suffer from the inability to track and trace their products as they are being made, shipped, distributed, and serviced. This opens the door to everything from counterfeiting, to committing fraud, all the way to having to recall an entire fleet of cars because one machine was not calibrated – and no one knows which parts went through it.
Alitheon's FeaturePrint now offers a reprieve from this.
On the one hand, innovation is easier to achieve because the tools at our disposal are so much more powerful than they were five or ten years ago. We have more options, more capability, and more opportunities. However, this is a double-edged sword. With all the options, tools, and capabilities, which should be used and focused on, how does a company or team ensure they are using the right tool for the right need – not just because something is a hot buzzword or cool technology but because it does not add applicable value? AI and ML are used today as buzzwords for anything. Are they real at all? Are they truly needed for a solution? These are important and sometimes hard questions to answer.
Everything is going digital, but we still live in a physical world. How do you know that the item you are holding, buying, or installing, is in fact what it is supposed to be? Be it a high-consequence item like brake, airbag, and pharmaceuticals, or high-priced items like collectables or high-end watches, no one is immune from this challenge. And with global counterfeits hitting at $2.3 trillion a year, it is only getting worse. Alitheon's FeaturePrint technology is disrupting product manufacturing, distribution, and trade, ushering in a new era of product authentication and identification that makes the world a safer, more trusted place. Whether you're at the top of the supply chain and responsible for product manufacturing and distribution, or you're an everyday consumer – you will be able to take a photo of any item and immediately authenticate and identify it.
This immediate and irrefutable identification and authentication help protect brands, reduce waste, eliminate fraud and theft, and could ultimately save lives. In the auto industry or in pharma, for example, counterfeit car parts – from bogus airbag components to fake brake pads – and fake medicines and vaccines can create massive issues that often go undetected, until it's too late. Alitheon eliminates that problem of fakes.
Moreover, it makes the notion of NFTs more practical for consumers, further connecting their digital and physical worlds. The digital FeaturePrint is a unique non-fungible identifier for a physical product. With a FeaturePrint, the item is its own proof, like a fingerprint is to a human. With FeaturePrint, people can take ownership of the aftermarket and secondary markets by ensuring authenticity and provenance for themselves and their customers. Whether they purchase or sell their high-value item in a store, online, or in the secondary marketplace, there's assurance without any doubt that they are buying or selling the real thing.
First focus on knowing what questions you want to answer and why you ask them. Otherwise, you could be spending a lot of money and time for no reason and no value.
Always remember where you come from and where you are going; the light at the end of the tunnel could be a train and only dead fish go with the flow.
Big Data and Analytics are only as good as what you use them for and if you will use them at all. Big data for the sake of collecting a lot of data is meaningless. A lot of analytics and charts that don't help you make a better or faster decision are meaningless. Big Data and Analytics can help us make better and faster decisions and answer questions better and quicker. But we need to know what the questions are and why we are asking them. Otherwise, we could be spending a lot of money and time for no reason and no value.
First focus on knowing what questions you want to answer and why you are asking them. Otherwise, you could be spending a lot of money and time for no reason and no value.
Alitheon's FeaturePrint technology lies where AI intersects with the business sector, providing a new way of labeling that cannot be moved, faked, or damaged – and does not require adding anything to an item. Traditional labeling is done by adding some form of the mark to an item or a product. Bar codes, QR codes, stickers, holograms, serial numbers, RFID tags, NFC tags are some of the common examples. Utilizing Alitheon's optical AI technology, products and items can be more easily and efficiently authenticated, identified, and traced. Businesses can assign every physical item it produces its own fingerprint, just like people have – without adding a thing. This is faster, cheaper, and safer for the environment since it doesn't require the use of stickers, labels, or inks – all of which end up in the garbage dump.
Focus on what you want to achieve and define the purpose. Ask yourself if you are doing this, learning this, and applying this for the right reasons. If you can't answer yourself, choose something else.
