Quality In, Quality Out
Published in Packaging Machinery Technology, September 2009, p.62. Written by Jim Parsons. Click here to view the article as it appears on PMT's website.
A company’s quality assurance (QA) program comprises a substantial amount of the intelligent effort Ruskin described, with processes and procedures designed to ensure that a product’s appearance and performance live up to and, whenever possible, exceed customer expectations, resulting in brand loyalty, repeat sales and that all-important word-of-mouth reputation.
Sometimes, however, QA may be perceived simply as focusing on the bookends of the packaging process, i.e., ensuring that the ingredients and inputs are sound and that the completed items with any obvious defects are removed before shipment.
In truth, QA spans the length and breadth of the packaging process, with each component—fillers, weighers, conveyors, sealers, cappers, palletizers, etc.—contributing to, and potentially detracting from, the product’s quality.
QA is also a function with multiple dimensions and multiple demands.
There’s no doubt that image and appearance go a long way in determining the degree of awareness and confidence customers will have in a company’s name and products. According to John Rea, national sales manager for Elliott Manufacturing, Fresno, Calif., something as simple as a visual first look at a product in a retail outlet speaks volumes about the quality inside.
“The unknown factor in this final purchase process is the time and energy that has gone before this consumer picks the product from the shelf,” he says.
Nick Wilson, president of Morrison Container Handling Solutions, Glenwood, Ill., adds that the importance of first impressions already leads many companies to carefully scrutinize every component of every machine that comes in contact with labels or containers.
“We have customers who are very meticulous about even the tiniest scuff or hole on a label that the average consumer may not notice,” he says. “Meeting those standards requires packaging equipment that is well-designed, but also uses parts that don’t cause damage or require products to be reworked.”
“The outer packaging is the barrier that maintains the integrity of the product inside,” agrees Mark Mosher, U.S. sales engineer for KOCH Packaging Systems, LP, Towaco, N.J. “In some cases, such as sterile medical devices and wound care dressings, the package barrier requirements are paramount to the product’s efficacy.”
But with the increasing speed and automation of packaging system, QA likewise must reach deeper into the systems to uncover potential problems.
“If you wait until the end of the process, you won’t find those defects,” says Narayan Subramaniam, product manager for Cognex Vision Systems, Natick, Mass.
Mosher points out how the design of certain feeding and handling systems can cause variable results of operation based on the amount of product in the magazine or conveyor.
“Care should be taken to fully understand all handling characteristics of the product and packaging materials, and develop a selfchecking system to ensure proper operation for each run cycle,” he says.
SHARPENING THE SYSTEM
As with any other improvement program, making good decisions about packaging system QA requires good planning and good information. Owners need to determine what they want to achieve, and what it takes to get there. And the best way to achieve that is through good, two-way communication with the manufacturers they choose to work with.
“The end user must provide as much information about the product and process goals so that the component manufacturer can design equipment around them,” Rea says. “Similarly, it’s up to the manufacturer to ask the right questions. The customer doesn’t know our equipment better than we do, so it becomes our responsibility to communicate openly and continually to insure that what we propose meets the customer’s goals.”
Jim Harris, former product manager for LifeScan, Milpatis, Calif., adds that it’s essential to have a company’s QA group included in the development land procurement process, “to gather input which may help provide a smoother acceptance of the final articles prior to full production runs.”
Maintaining the QA performance of packaging equipment is also a dynamic process. Rea cites a growing trend among system owners to cut costs by changing the materials used in their packaging processes.
“Say an owner is doing pick and pack with 6mm plastic bottles, then switches to a 3mm source,” he says. “If the pack heads were designed around the thicker material, they’re likely to start having problems with crushed products.”
For that reason, Rea adds, owners should first call the manufacturer and have the new material tested to identify any needed adjustments.
“That’s better than trying to experiment on your own and hope something works,” he says.
QA also involves continually being alert for opportunities to improve.
“System owners may not realize that they can do better,” Wilson says. Rather than accepting a certain reject rate as a fact of life, “they can reduce damage or achieve higher fill levels without waste, while also improving system uptime and efficiency.”
On the other hand, past experience can also limit system owners’ thinking. Subramaniam uses vision systems as an example. He says that in cases where vision systems have fallen short of performance expectations, packagers may be hesitant to give the technology a second chance.
“Because the owners didn’t get the results they hoped for, they don’t pursue other options that may be available,” he says. “They may also be unaware of systems that can handle washdown conditions and harsh environments.”
Expense has also been another barrier to upgrading a system’s QA technology. But that return on such an investment has many dimensions. Gary Saunders, vice president of sales and marketing for Magnum Systems’ Taylor Products division uses the precise handling capabilities of robotics as an example.
“The robot has always been thought of as equipment that works well in environments with repetitive requirements, less then desirable work environments, consistency of performance and labor saving,” he says. “But in palletizing, pick and place and similar applications, robots can provide a softer and more precise handling of the product. The result will be an improved overall product quality with reduced breakage.”
KEEPING IT REAL
In the pharmaceutical industry, the need to prevent the spread of counterfeit drugs has added a new dimension to QA through the chain of custody tracking requirement for distributors of prescription drugs and related products, more commonly known as e-pedigree.
What’s more, growing concerns about counterfeit products, pilfer resistance and tamper evident packages have spread into the personal care, healthcare, consumer products and food markets.
“As such, the role of automation systems for packaging has evolved from not only enclosing the product but into a system that confirms everything is as it should be,” Mosher says.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is expected to eventually follow international e-pedigree specifications that include a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), Global Location Number (GLN) and Global Data Synchronization Number (GDSN). The GS1 Healthcare User Group recommends “investing in camera-based code scanners to address specific needs for automatic identification in healthcare.”
Finding the most efficient way to comply with these upcoming requirements is Topic A among pharmaceutical companies, most of which use radio frequency identification (RFID) tags for higher levels of packaging such as pallets and boxes.
“However, using RFID tags at the container and bundle level substantially increases packaging costs,” says John Scholes, special projects manager for Omega Design, Inc., Exton, Pa. “Another concern is the high cost of the RFID interrogators that must be used by pharmacists to verify the pedigree of the container used to fill each prescription.”
In comparison, printing a two-dimensional digital code on a paper label has the advantage of much lower costs for both the label and the reader, high print and apply speeds, negligible failure rates and easy implementation.
“The only way to guarantee the contents of a bundle is to first establish a bundle’s integrity and then identify its containers,” Scholes adds, “but side labels pose a challenge for packagers trying to identify containers after a bundle has been created. For instance, how do you scan the codes on the middle containers in a 3x4 bundle since the labels are blocked from all sides?”
One answer is to print a unique ID on the bottom of every empty container to complement the serialized label affixed to the side. While the side label continues to be referenced throughout the life of the container, “the unique bottom code enables the packager to easily identify containers after they’ve been aggregated within a bundle using a vision system,” says Scholes. “Care has to be taken to adapt the code to the ‘landscape’ of container bottom—the mold seams, recycling logo and other features that can affect the system’s ability to capture and read the codes.”
DISTINCTIVE DETERMINATIONS
Unfortunately, following regulations isn’t enough to combat the growing challenge of preserving product integrity. As with Internet hackers and spammers, counterfeiters consider each new barrier to their work simply a new challenge. “Counterfeiters can buy the tools they need to create their products at packaging shows, or find unscrupulous contract packagers to process their products,” says Gary Parish of Complete Inspection Systems, Indianatlantic, Fla. “They can also create labels and bottles by scanning originals and creating new label graphics for packages.”
Packagers are not without effective countermeasures. “The keys to detecting and identifying counterfeit products include positive identification on the components that can be checked and verified online and in the field,” Parish says. “Some manufacturers have used pictures to compare their products with the counterfeit ones, using a variety of techniques. Invisible bar codes on labels and packaging provide another form of protection.”
QA applications have already validated the increasing precision of image comparison technologies. Harris reports how LifeScan’s QA group needed to accurately compare the first article from a production run with an analog proof of the original artwork. “One of the main issues encountered from this type of comparison is the inherent differences between the analog proof and the original digital file,” he says. “There are always color and dimensional differences due to the differences in the types of printing equipment.”
Using Complete Inspection’s Q-Spec inspection system, which combines a high-resolution camera with an advanced proofreading software suite, LifeScan compares the original digital files with very precise high quality scans of analog proofs. “By converting the comparison to a purely digital process, the system can perform what computers are quite good at—finding differences between digital files.”
Freed from having to hunt down label discrepancies on their own, LifeScan’s QA staff can now devote their time and expertise determining the criticality of differences detected by the software.
“Measured comparison of the activities showed substantial time savings from 25 to over 90 percent,” Harris adds.
Another QA/anti-counterfeiting option is the digital watermark—a unique code that can be incorporated into the graphics directly in the printing process without the need for additional printers or processes. This process, while new, is currently used in a wide majority of digital movies, with movies frames containing the identification of that picture.
“One of the main advantages of using digital watermarks is that it is like having a bar code all over the package without taking up any space,” says Parish, whose firm has partnered with Digimarc to developed methods to read and transmit the package information using a cell phone camera and Internet.
“You may never be able to completely control what happens to your product once it leaves the manufacturing site,” Parish says, “but by building in more safeguards, you may frustrate counterfeiters just enough for them to turn their efforts elsewhere or give up altogether.”
PARTNERING FOR PROTECTION
Packagers can expect their strategy for ensuring quality products and processes—and staying ahead of threats to those high standards—to continually evolve in step with changes in their product lines, consumer preferences, regulatory requirements and drivers that have yet to be identified. Fortunately, it’s a task they need not face alone. Rea notes that packaging equipment manufacturers are now better able to estimate expected wear times and replacement cycles of critical parts.
“This enables users to replace these parts on a scheduled shutdown, eliminating the risk of costly breakdowns during production runs, or wear that might affect product quality,” he says.
Subramaniam adds that as a company’s product line changes, so too can the elements of its QA inspection technology. Vision systems, for example, can be easily programmed to differentiate between an ever-growing range of product contents, label types and identifying data.
“The answers are all out there,” he says. “It’s just a matter of the packaging system owner and the technology supplier working together to find them.”