Auto-Trainable Vision System Ensures Quality for Future Product Combinations

Key Features

• Front and back label inspection with recipe/label verification
• Date and lot code inspection – Robust Optical Character Verification (OCV) is used for inspecting quality, contrast, and legibility of printed codes
• Auto-trainable vision system allows line operators to add hundreds of new product combinations without the need for additional integration support.

Challenges

• If the recipe on the line and the label on the products do not match, or if the lot and date codes are wrong, hundreds or thousands of bottles can be filled before the mistake is discovered
• Frequent additions and changes to the product mix mean recipes and labels change often
• High speed application that needs to accurately inspect hundreds of bottles per minute

 Impact

• The auto-trainable feature minimizes long-term costs and helps the company stay competitive by allowing easy additions and changes to their product mix
• Reduces line-downtime for new products
• Prevents thousands of products from being mislabeled and coded

EPIC Solution

A large CPG company needed to inspect both the front and back labels of bottled products on a high-speed filling line. The customer had three main challenges that this vision solution solved:

• Misdated, coded, or labeled products pose both a risk of recall and a risk to market-share when customers get mislabeled or date products.
• A competitive market requires a constant innovation of new product fragrances to keep up with niche competitors and changing customer tastes
• High speed filling lines present a double challenge in that hundreds or thousands of products can be filled into mislabeled or miscoded bottles very quickly, leading to a lot of product waste. In addition, off-the-shelf vision systems struggle to inspect accurately at high speeds without slowing the entire line down

EPIC designed a custom vision system that performs date and lot code inspection, label inspection, recipe verification, and artwork inspection for both the front and back labels of the products at speed. The system is also auto-trainable for new recipe and label combinations.

Line operators can put the system in “training mode” and then it will use the first 10 products to train the vision software on label/artwork/code combinations for both the front and back labels, and then inspects at full speed thereafter.

The system is highly accurate (meeting strict GMP practices for a fortune 100 consumer products company) and high-speed, inspecting hundreds of packages per minute with a low false rejection rate.