One factory license.
Establish a common software and governance layer for qualified visual inspection workflows within the licensed factory.
Factory-wide economics
One factory. One price. Unlimited visual inspection use cases.
United Vision licenses a factory-wide Vision AI capability rather than charging another software license for every inspection. Plant teams can start with one high-value defect-detection use case, reuse the operating model across the factory and keep building under the licensed-factory scope.
In brief
A factory-wide United Vision software license can cost less than a single use case from conventional alternatives. This is a software-to-software comparison over the same period, with license scope and included services made explicit, not a claim that total deployment cost is always lower. The factory license supports unlimited use cases within the licensed factory; hardware, compute, integration, implementation, support and validation are scoped separately.
Economic model
Add inspections, not software licenses.
One recurring factory software license supports unlimited use cases within the licensed factory. Evaluate the license alongside the real cost of deployment, operation and change.
Scope the real work.
Imaging, integration, labeling, validation and process change remain specific to the inspection and environment.
Build on each inspection.
Carry forward roles, methods, architecture decisions and governance so each next use case does not begin from zero.
Compare the models
The first-project quote does not reveal factory-wide economics.
| Question | Typical one-off project model | United Vision's factory capability model |
|---|---|---|
| What is licensed? | A dedicated solution for one inspection. | One recurring United Vision software license for the licensed factory. |
| What happens when another use case is approved? | It can trigger another software decision, quote or project. | The factory can add unlimited United Vision use cases without another United Vision software license. |
| Which cameras and edge hardware can be used? | The project may be tied to a vendor-specific appliance or hardware family. | The plant can bring qualified cameras and supported factory-owned edge devices; no mandatory United Vision hardware stack is required. |
| Where does inference run? | It depends on the project architecture. | Production inference always runs on the supported edge device at the factory. |
| Who owns the cloud account? | It depends on the vendor and deployment. | United Vision cloud services run in a supported cloud account chosen and owned by the customer. |
| What still needs to be scoped? | Hardware, engineering, integration, support and validation. | Hardware, compute, implementation, integration, services and validation are scoped separately from the factory software license. |
Three-year ROI & TCO worksheet
Build the business case for your factory.
The first inspection, the next inspection and every production change. Use your rollout plan and validated improvement targets. Bring costs and cash benefits into one view to see when the investment can pay back.
Use one currency and actual amounts, not thousands. All financial fields are required. Enter 0 where you expect no cost or benefit; a blank is not zero.
Upfront equipment, setup, integration and initial validation. Do not repeat this spend in the annual rows.
Enter amounts without commas or currency symbols, with up to two decimal places. Adjust each year’s benefits for the inspections actually expected to be live and their operating months.
Cost checklist, benefit discipline & shared assumptions
Count each cost once. Software belongs in its own row. Other operating costs include cloud consumption, support, maintenance, retraining, validation and incremental internal labor spending. Deployment / capital covers additional hardware, integration and commissioning in that year. Do not also count depreciation or sunk costs.
Use a measured baseline. Estimate cash avoided in scrap, rework, sorting, containment and quality escapes. Include labor savings only when spend such as overtime, contractor cost or backfill is actually avoided. Do not count the same prevented defect in multiple benefit categories.
Plan the rollout with OT and IT. Agree qualified use cases, acceptance criteria, activation months, production volume, equipment, cloud capacity, support responsibilities and the staff effort needed to keep inspections current.
Keep capacity and risk separate. Released employee hours are operational capacity, not automatically cash savings. Record them separately. Do not monetize hypothetical risk avoidance or unproven revenue uplift as cash benefits. Compare alternatives only with your own like-for-like quotes and assumptions.
Note deployment dates, baselines, evidence owners, validation criteria, retained staff effort and exclusions. These notes do not change the calculation.
Calculated only in this browser page. This worksheet does not send your inputs, save them to browser storage or track them. Use Clear all inputs to reset it. It is a planning estimate, not a quote, financial advice or a performance guarantee.
Your three-year estimate
All monetary results are in , based entirely on your entries.
- 3-year cash TCO
- 3-year cash benefits
- Net benefit
- Three-year ROI
- Year-end payback
- Released capacity
All entered initial, deployment and recurring costs.
Your rollout-adjusted benefits, without released-capacity value.
Cash benefits less cash TCO. A negative value is a modeled loss.
Net benefit divided by three-year cash TCO.
Recovery based on cumulative year-end cash flows.
Not included in cash benefits or ROI.
| Period | Costs | Cash benefits | Cumulative net benefit |
|---|
How this estimate works
Cash TCO = initial spend + all three years of software, other operating and additional deployment costs. Net benefit = total cash benefits − cash TCO. ROI = net benefit ÷ cash TCO × 100, only when cash TCO is greater than zero.
Payback uses cumulative cash flows, not an annual average. Initial investment occurs before Year 1; each year’s costs and benefits are booked at that year-end. Payback is the first non-negative year-end balance with no later deficit in the modeled period. There is no within-year payback estimate. This is an undiscounted, pre-tax model, excluding financing, terminal value and automatically assumed inflation.
Use the deployment-readiness framework to test feasibility and the data and model ownership guidance to clarify responsibilities. A factory software license does not make equipment, compute, implementation or staff effort free.
Questions answered
What buyers ask about factory-wide economics.
How is United Vision priced?
United Vision uses a recurring factory software license built around one factory, one price and unlimited use cases within the licensed factory. A working session defines the factory boundary, deployment needs, support and implementation responsibilities before a proposal is prepared.
What does the factory software license cover?
The license covers the United Vision software capability and unlimited use cases within the licensed factory. Hardware, compute, integration, implementation and services are scoped according to the plant environment and documented in the proposal.
Why use factory-wide pricing instead of per-use-case pricing?
Factory-wide pricing removes another United Vision software purchase from the decision to pursue each additional inspection. That lets quality, operations and engineering teams prioritize the factory’s visual-inspection backlog by value and feasibility instead of rebuilding the software business case one use case at a time.
Do we have to buy United Vision cameras, edge devices or cloud hosting?
No mandatory United Vision hardware or cloud tenant is required. Bring qualified cameras and supported factory-owned edge devices, and choose a supported cloud environment in an account your company owns. Hardware, integration and services are scoped separately.
Where does production inference run?
Production inference always runs on the supported factory-owned edge device at the factory. The customer-owned cloud account supports the governed model lifecycle rather than the real-time line verdict.
Can one factory license cost less than a conventional single-use-case solution?
Yes. A factory-wide United Vision software license can cost less than a single use case from conventional alternatives. Compare software to software over the same period, making the license scope and any bundled services explicit. This does not mean every United Vision deployment has a lower total cost. Hardware, compute, integration, implementation, support and validation require a separate like-for-like comparison for the plant and are documented in the proposal.
Does United Vision use a recurring software license?
Yes. United Vision is recurring factory software. The important difference is its scope: one factory price supports unlimited use cases within the licensed factory, rather than requiring another United Vision software license for every inspection.
How do we calculate ROI for AI visual inspection?
Start with an agreed production baseline, the inspections expected to go live and their activation dates. Estimate cash benefits from avoided scrap, rework, containment, quality escapes and spending that is genuinely removed. Subtract the full incremental cash cost of software, equipment, cloud, implementation, operation and validation. Three-year ROI is net cash benefit divided by three-year cash TCO, multiplied by 100, when cost is positive. Adjust benefits for rollout timing, keep released capacity separate and calculate payback from cumulative cash flows rather than a single annual average. The worksheet on this page uses your inputs, not assumed customer results.
What belongs in visual-inspection total cost of ownership?
Include the factory software license, cameras and optics where needed, edge devices, cloud consumption, implementation, integration, commissioning, training, validation, maintenance, support and incremental internal labor spending. Separate initial spend from recurring operating costs and later expansion costs. Count each item once over the same evaluation period. The worksheet estimates incremental cash TCO; document retained staff effort and opportunity cost separately. Customer-owned infrastructure does not make its operation free or automatically cheaper.
What costs change when we add another inspection use case?
An additional qualified inspection within the licensed factory does not require another United Vision software license. It can still require production examples, labeling, new or adjusted imaging, edge capacity, cloud consumption, integration, validation and staff or partner effort. Plant teams can reuse the supported workflow, methods and governance, while each inspection is qualified for its own production requirements. Confirm factory boundaries, software scope and services in the proposal.
How does owning trained models and inspection IP affect long-term value?
The customer owns its production images, trained inspection models and customer-specific inspection IP, not the United Vision software platform. Keeping that inspection knowledge with the customer provides a foundation for reviewing, retraining and extending inspections as production changes. It is a retained operational asset, not a guaranteed cash saving. Export formats, technical portability, transition support and post-contract runtime rights are separate questions to document in the agreement; ownership alone does not establish those rights.
Can we count released inspection hours as cash savings?
Only count a cash benefit when spending is actually avoided, such as reduced overtime, contractor expense or a funded backfill requirement. Time released for existing employees to perform other work is valuable capacity, but it is not automatically a cash saving. The worksheet records optional released hours separately and excludes them from cash benefits, net benefit and ROI. Agree the baseline and treatment with operations and finance, and do not count the same labor benefit twice.
Bring one inspection opportunity. Leave with a clearer path.
Bring the priority use case, production baseline and rollout assumptions. Together, we can examine deployment requirements, ownership responsibilities and the costs and benefits that belong in your factory business case.