REFERENCE CASE | AUTOMOTIVE
Brose: AI welding-seam inspection in daily production across six countries
AI visual inspection Production & quality assurance
Since 2021, an AI visual inspection solution has checked welding seams at Brose factories, and today it runs in six countries: Germany, the Czech Republic, Serbia, the UK, the United States and Mexico. In spring 2026, Brose and Tekai started a collaboration to develop the solution further and to support and maintain it at every site.
PROVEN IN DAILY PRODUCTION
- 2.4M+
- automated weld-seam inspections to date
- 250
- weld seam geometries
- 94.3%
- of inspections accepted without human intervention
- Seconds
- instead of minutes per evaluation
01THE CUSTOMER
About Brose
Brose is the largest privately owned German company in the supplier industry. The company develops and manufactures mechatronic systems for vehicle doors and seats, as well as electric drives, and every third new car is equipped with at least one Brose product. The Brose Group generated sales of €7.9 billion in 2025 and employs around 33,000 people in 24 countries.
A new collaboration, built on a proven solution
The solution started from a Brose innovation contest in 2019 that set out to automate welding seam visual inspection, a task essential to Brose’s business across production lines. It went into production in 2021 and has been used continuously and actively developed ever since.
In spring 2026, Brose chose Tekai as its partner for the next stage. The collaboration covers two areas: further development of the solution as Brose’s production and quality needs evolve, and support and maintenance that keep it running reliably at every factory. The Tekai team works in close cooperation with Brose’s welding and IT professionals, and the same team that develops the solution also supports and maintains it, without handoffs in between.
What the solution does, and at what scale
Welding seam inspection has extremely high quality criteria and requires deep knowhow on different welding seam types. The inspection itself is demanding and repetitive work carried out 24/7.
The solution automatically detects welding seams. Deep learning models segment and identify the relevant parts of each seam, and computer vision techniques produce reliable measurements. These are compared against criteria set by Brose’s welding experts to decide whether the seam passes. Inspectors can review and refine any result, and every inspection is recorded.
Since the first production deployment in 2021, the system has carried out more than 2.4 million inspections to date, around 3,000 a day, across 250 welding seam geometries.
THE BROSE PERSPECTIVE
“Welding seam quality is non-negotiable for us, and automated inspection is now part of how many of our plants work every day. With Tekai, we have a partner that keeps the solution reliable and develops it further as our production evolves.”
Martin Fitzel
Senior Welding Expert, Brose
THE TEKAI PERSPECTIVE
“Brose shows what AI visual inspection looks like well past the pilot stage: millions of inspections, six countries, and quality experts who trust the results. Our job is to keep it that way and to keep improving it, with one collaborative team that knows both the technology and the production floor.”
Kai Lehtinen
Head of AI Business, Tekai
Benefits for Brose
Faster inspection
Evaluation time drops from minutes to seconds, freeing qualified inspection professionals for work that needs their expertise.
Consistent quality decisions
A standardized process means fewer errors. According to a Brose report, 94.3% of automatic inspections are accepted without human intervention.
Full transparency and traceability
Every inspection is recorded, giving a complete quality history for each seam.
Less dependence on scarce expertise
Experts’ criteria are built into the system, reducing the competence development that manual inspection requires.
05WHAT’S NEXT
Looking ahead
Five years in production have turned an innovation contest idea into an everyday part of Brose’s quality assurance. With Tekai, the next chapter is about building on that foundation: extending inspection to new seam types, lines and sites, and putting a growing body of inspection data to work for process improvement. The solution that proved AI can be trusted with welding quality at scale is now set up to deliver even more.
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What happens next
- 01Share the lineParts, variants and defect types you care about.
- 02We scope itFeasibility check on your real samples.
- 03Clear planTimeline, what you provide, and what's reused.