Revolutionizing Food and Beverage: From Production to Packaging, the Automated Way

As improvements have been made to food and beverage quality and compliance standards, the stakes have gotten much higher for industry players. Food and beverage manufacturers must meet growing consumer demand for the highest quality products and avoid potentially damaging recalls or foodborne illness outbreaks, but they still need to keep costs down and make a profit too.

Fortunately, this is where technology can be a huge difference maker, not just in producing high-quality products and ensuring safety, but in automating and error-proofing production and packaging for better efficiency and cost control.

A good case in point is how the food and beverage industry is increasingly turning to fixed industrial scanners and machine vision technologies to help automate key production, packaging, and visual inspection processes.

For example, many food and beverage companies are expanding their use of Zebra fixed industrial scanners to enable end-to-end product traceability and help automate counting, sorting, routing, labeling and packaging checks.

Zebra’s scanners capture 1D and 2D barcodes to verify that the correct products are moving down the line, in the correct packaging, and with the right labels applied. They can also be used to help automatically count, sort and route products down the right conveyor or packaging lines, and they can even be used as the “eyes” for robotic arms that move products from one line to another.

Zebra’s scanners can do this autonomously at high speeds, using advanced imaging capabilities and lensing, optics, and lighting to capture barcodes accurately and reliably in virtually any environment or operating condition.

Similarly, Zebra’s machine vision sensors use the same imaging technology to perform automated and sophisticated visual inspections, such as inspecting products for defects, contamination, improper sealing, bottle cap skew, missing labels or incorrect label information, or other production or packaging issues.

Zebra’s sensors can confirm presence or absence; measure product dimensions; verify print quality, position, and orientation; and even inspect seals and tamper bands, fill levels, and issues with color, shape, non-conformity and much more.

The sensors achieve this with advanced imaging technology as well as on-board processing, working in conjunction with Zebra’s Aurora Focus software to automatically perform highly sophisticated visual analysis. It all happens with software tools that are fast and easy to set up but are incredibly powerful. Once you set up a job once, Zebra’s sensors do the job from there, providing high-speed, accurate and reliable visual inspection that’s far beyond anything that’s capable with the human eye.

Zebra’s tools include object location, pixel counting, missing pixel detection, brightness and contrast measurement, edge detection, distance measurement, advanced patter detection, and even a tool to find, sort and count areas with similar pixels. This means you can use Zebra’s machine vision sensors in a wide variety of food and beverage applications—wherever you need to inspect everything from the uniform color and shape of products to the presence of potentially dangerous contaminants.

Zebra’s devices can accomplish all of this, even in industrial environments where lighting, visibility or operating conditions are not conducive to visual imaging and analysis. Zebra’s solutions include illumination, lensing and optics, and all the tools needed to adjust filters, focus and exposure, so you get precise and accurate results, even in the toughest conditions.

Food and Beverage Applications for Zebra Machine Vision Technology

Ultimately, if you use barcodes and labels in producing or packaging your food and beverage products, and if you need to trace products and inspect them for quality, there are many ways you can use Zebra’s machine vision and fixed scanning sensors. Here’s a quick breakdown of some of the most common ways that companies are already using Zebra’s devices and amazingly simple software:

Visual and Label Inspections

• Inspecting product labels and content
• Confirming label presence or absence
• Verifying print quality, position and orientation
• Checking dates and lot codes
• Ensuring correct allergen information
• Verifying correct time-sensitive packaging

Quality Control

• Inspecting packages, seals and tamper bands
• Checking bottle fill levels, correct caps and cap placement
• Ensuring correct product presence/absence
• Detecting contaminants, color issues or non-uniformity
• Confirming and verifying use-by and expiration dates

Track and Trace

• Maintaining digital traceability of every item
• Verifying correct products and packaging
• Automating counting, sorting and routing
• Creating a digital record for inventory and logistics
• Enabling time- and labor-saving process automation

At a time when consumer demand for quality products and regulatory compliance requirements have never been higher, automating processes like these is a potentially crucial way to stay ahead of the game and gain a competitive edge while saving time, labor and costs in your operations.

To learn more about the potential to implement or expand the use of machine vision and fixed industrial scanning in your operations, connect with our team to set up a discovery call and get answers to your questions.

As experts in industrial automation since 1977, Automation Distribution can help you get the most out of the latest innovations in automation technology, and we can even help you design, build and deploy systems in your operations. Just call us at 888-600-3080, email us, or schedule a 15 minute exploratory call to get started.