As labelling requirements get more complex, inspection technology must keep pace. Installation of today’s state-of-the-art systems can also provide a boost in efficiency.
A pharmaceutical packaging line presents a challenge for vision system applications because of the need to select exactly the right label among the dozens of possible alternatives needed to meet differing languages and regulatory requirements around the world.
When one pharmaceutical manufacturer installed a new packaging line, it decided to upgrade the vision system to Cognex In-Sight 5100 and 5600 systems, which use optical character recognition and optical character verification (OCR and OCV) to read characters on the label and compare them with the correct sequence. This approach reduced the false reject rate to 0.5%, making a substantial contribution to improving the first pass yield (Quality) and consequently the overall equipment effectiveness* (OEE) by 200%.
The packaging line used previously in this application was a linear machine with hot stamp pressure-sensitive printing and an image comparison vision system. This vision system had difficulty in matching ideal to actual images, which led to a high false reject rate. The vision system used in the past rejected 25% of good packages. This high false reject rate played a major role in the line’s disappointing OEE. The vision system also took a considerable period of time to set up for new labels.
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