New morphological positioning algorithm and inspection method are presented and compared with a method by means of the Hough transform. The positioning algorithm is the process of finding the center and the rotated angle of the surface mounted device (SMD). The inspection method is capable of detecting the location of broken or bent leads. In order to obtain the center and the orientation of the SMD rapidly, the Hough transform method utilizes feature points (concave points) and is executed on a DSP board. The proposed morphological method is implemented by using the morphological skeleton subsets, and an ultimate orientation is decided by the Hit-or-Miss transform (HMT). In the inspection process, two inspection methods also are presented. The first method utilizes the morphological methods, i.e., opening and closing. It is performed before the positioning process and called an initial inspection. The second method follows the positioning process and is performed by an inspection of intersections of rulers and the lead edge (or the skeleton). It is a ruling technique which is referred to as a detailed inspection. We find the morphological approach is preciser and faster than the Hough approach by the comparison of the proposed algorithms.