Government agencies have put food manufacturers under a microscope to ensure they follow food safety standards and comply with regulations. When it comes to the health and safety of consumers, quality assurance is a top priority, but despite this, according to The World of Health Organization, approximately 600 million people become ill each year after eating contaminated food, and 420,000 die.
Using human manual inspection for quality assurance checks in this industry can be detrimental to the company and its consumers due to human error, fatigue and subjective opinions. Furthermore, foreign particles that should not be found in the product may be microscopic and invisible to the human eye. These defects can lead to illness, recalls, lawsuits, and a long-term negative perception of the brand itself. Packaging, food and beverage manufacturers must realize these potential risks and review the benefits of incorporating machine vision. Although machine vision implementation may sound like a costly investment, it is small price to pay when compared to the potential damage of uncaught issues. Below I explore a few benefits that machine vision offers in the packaging, food and beverage industries.
Safety
Consumers expect and rely on safe products from food manufacturers. Machine vision can see through packaging to determine the presence of foreign particles that should not be present, ensuring these products are removed from the production line. Machine vision is also capable of inspecting for cross-contamination, color correctness, ripeness, and even spoilage. For example, bruises on apples can be hard to spot for the untrained eye unless extremely pronounced. SWIR (shortwave infrared) illumination proves effective for the detection of defects and contamination. Subsurface bruising defects become much easier to detect due to the optimization of lighting and these defected products can be scrapped.
Uniformity of Containers
Brand recognition is huge for manufacturers in this industry. Products that have defects such as dents or uneven contents inside the container can greatly affect the public’s perception of the product and/or company. Machine vision can detect even the slightest deformity in the container and ensure they are removed from the line. It can also scan the inside of the container to ensure that the product is uniform for each batch. Vision systems have the ability optimize lighting intensity, uniformity, and geometry to obtain images with good contrast and signal to noise. Having the ability to alter lighting provides a much clearer image of the point of interest. This can allow you to see inside a container to determine if the fill level is correct for the specific product.
Packaging
Packaging is important because if the products shipped to the store are regularly defected, the store can choose to stop stocking that item, costing the manufacturer valuable business. The seal must last from production to arrival at the store to ensure that the product maintains its safe usability through its marked expiration date. In bottling applications, the conveyors are moving at high speeds so the inspection process must be able to quickly and correctly identify defects. A facility in Marseille, France was looking to inspect Heineken beer bottles as they passed through a bottling machine at a rate of 22 bottles/second (80,000 bottles/hour). Although this is on the faster end of the spectrum, many applications require high-speed quality checks that are impossible for a human operator. A machine vision system can be configured to handle these high-speed applications and taught to detect the specified defect.
Labels
It’s crucial for the labels to be printed correctly and placed on the correct product because of the food allergy threats that some consumers experience. Machine vision can also benefit this aspect of the production process as cameras can be taught to recognize the correct label and brand guidelines. Typically, these production lines move at speeds too fast for human inspection. An intuitive, easy to use, machine vision software package allows you to filter the labels, find the object using reference points and validate the text quickly and accurately.
These areas of the assembly process throughout packaging, food and beverage facilities should be considered for machine vision applications. Understanding what problems occur and the cost associated with them is helpful in justifying whether machine vision is right for you.
For more information on machine vision, visit https://www.balluff.com/local/us/products/product-overview/machine-vision-and-optical-identification/.
