Experience

Kraft Cheese Vision

A food manufacturer contacted CDSL to design an inline 2D barcode inspection system. The product to be inspected was a 4.75” diameter tub, travelling at 115 FPM, with a 0.25” 2D barcode on the side and on the lid. Due to physical conveyor constraints, the barcode readers had to be positioned over 12” away from the product. Since the product could be in any orientation, 4 readers were used to capture the side barcode while one reader was used to capture the lid barcode. This forced the reject mechanism to be installed further downstream. Rather than relying on time delays, an encoder was installed on the conveyor to accurately track any rejected product. This also allowed for proper reject tracking during any conveyor starts/stops. A 6^th barcode reader was installed downstream of case packing to ensure that the product label was properly applied onto the case. All readers were integrated to make sure that all barcodes for the current product were readable and matched. 

Proper verification of the product and packaging has become more and more necessary to ensure the end customer receives the product as expected. CDSL has ample experience in barcode inspection systems to help with this validation process. Any barcode information from the production and packaging lines can then be integrated into plantwide data collection and reporting.