How to Ensure Your Beverage Package Quality
Mettler Toledo CI-Vision Posted 05/24/2012
Implementing a Vision Inspection Solution to monitor the quality and security of your beverage package is an effective quality control method that provides an immediate return on investment. Using a vision inspection solution can ensure your brand image, reduce the risk of retailer returns and protect consumers from harm and your company from potential liability risks.Introduction
The global beverage manufacturing and packaging industry is one of the most efficient processes in the world. Because of the enormous scale of the current beverage industry, American, European and Asian beverage manufacturers are becoming increasingly better equipped at manufacturing and packaging beverages at high speeds.
As a beverage manufacturer in these regions, you are serving the largest beverage markets in the world. Today's current market demands are creating challenges for production schedules and are applying pressures for quality standards like never before. Ensuring the quality of your bottled products before they reach the retailer’s shelf or the consumer is now more important than ever. Now top beverage manufacturers are starting to implement vision inspection programs.
A vision inspection program can be a valuable tool for a wide range of beverage manufacturers. The ability of vision inspection to detect and prevent defective product packaging from being distributed to consumers is invaluable. In recent years, retailers and consumers have become much less tolerant of with poor packaging quality that results in either health risks or increased retailer costs. If a vision inspection program is correctly implemented and managed, it can become a powerful tool to reduce rework and help safeguard your brand from recalls, increase retailer confidence, protect consumers from defective bottled products and yourself from possible lawsuits.
Today's Beverage Market
The beverage industry is one of the fastest growing sectors in Asia. Last year, there were an estimated 175 new lines installed in this region. The use of automated inspection systems in the beverage market is not being utilized. The risk and cost of not integrating a vision inspection system into the beverage manufacturing process is growing with every new line.
There are three driving factors why vision inspection is important for beverage manufacturers: (1) Faster line/production speed, (2) Increasing labor cost and (3) Increased quality standards.
(1) Faster line/production speed: Unlike most of the beverage bottling lines installed in the last decade, the standard speed of today’s bottling line is 720 bottles per minute. This makes manual inspection impossible. It also means the potential number of defects could increase dramatically. For example, if a nominal failure rate for a capping machine is 0.5%, the number of defective product produced in an 8-hour shift is:
1728 bottles = (720x60x8) x 0.5%. Potentially, equating to multiple retailers receiving more than 1700
defective products usually resulting in retailer returns, loss of retailer accounts, possible harm to the consumer and potential lawsuits.
(2) Increasing labor cost: Labor rates in Asia-Pacific have increased by up to 105% in the past two years. Furthermore, global manufacturers are finding it more difficult to find, train and keep a quality labor staff.
Vision inspection is able to reduce labor costs and ensure that quality standards are met on the factory floor.
(3) Increased quality standards: With every product quality recall (recall rates have increased on the same level as increased production rates) local consumers grow more aware of quality issues. Many consumers throughout the world are willing to purchase more reputable brand names for their percieved quality. The top tier beverage companies are now implementing vision inspeciton programs, as a standard to help protect their valuable brand image and reputation for quality.
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