Coherix CARES Appears in Forbes
Check out the latest write-up on Coherix CARES in Forbes:
Article excerpt from Forbes.com
Coherix Launches Program To Tackle Sticky Manufacturing Issue
By Ed Garsten, Senior Contributor.
Ed Garsten is a metro Detroit-based reporter who covers autos
Jun 24, 2025, 06:00am EDT
A manufacturing technology company has launched a program to help auto factories avoid facing a sticky situation. Where many parts and components were once primarily welded together by robots, those same robots are now using high-performance adhesives to do the job and they don’t always get it right.
In the case of cars and trucks, if the adhesives aren’t applied correctly, occupants’ safety could be at risk.
“The urethane on glass–that’s all that’s holding that glass in there is the glue. So that’s a very critical application,” said Dwight Carlson, chairman and CEO of Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Coherix, in an interview.
He also pointed to the critical role adhesives and sealants play in the myriad of electronic systems in today’s vehicles.
That’s why Coherix has launched Coherix Cares, a subscription-based program to help ensure robots are applying adhesives and sealants correctly along with providing expert support at factories already equipped with the company’s 3-D laser-based inspection systems.
“The idea was to create a program to help our customers bring things up to a certain level and help them maintain those using our systems as a tool to provide process feedback and make sure that their process is delivering the best capability that it can,” explained Jared Rogers, Coherix applications engineering manager.
But don’t lay all the blame on the robots if things go awry on the production line, warns Carlson. Coherix Cares is a backstop for the growing threat of human error.
“The technology going into these plants is increasing all the time, and at the same time, they’re trying to reduce costs anywhere they can,” said Carlson. “As a result, there’s less skilled people in these plants. At the same time, high technology like ours is going in. So there a big need for somebody to fill that gap.”
But don’t lay all the blame on the robots if things go awry on the production line, warns Carlson. Coherix Cares is a backstop for the growing threat of human error.
“The technology going into these plants is increasing all the time, and at the same time, they’re trying to reduce costs anywhere they can,” said Carlson. “As a result, there’s less skilled people in these plants. At the same time, high technology like ours is going in. So there a big need for somebody to fill that gap.”
It all begs the question of how hard is it to correctly apply glue? For a human with a brain and fine motor skills, it’s not a big trick to adjust to different parts and conditions.
It’s a lot different for a robot, says manufacturing expert and principal at Autotech Ventures, Ivy Nguyen.
“Humans know how to adjust to that on the fly, whereas a machine may have to be trained on thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, millions of examples of what do you do,” said Nguyen. “AI has made it possible to make those micro adjustments on the fly, I think, much more successfully than a machine designed in the 1980s might be able to do, but at the same time, if you need to make larger changes and how the glue is applied, you probably have to come in and rewrite some of the programs a bit, retrain the models a bit, in order to get it to work successfully.”
Nguyen also points out today’s factories may include equipment and systems from many different vendors making maintenance a bigger challenge.
Coherix Cares subscriptions run for a year at a time on a sliding scale on a per sensor rate and how much support the customer desires, according to Rogers.