T E C H N I C A L
B U L L E T I N
Eliminating Defects and Tightening the Quality Requirements for Packaging Could you imagine if the National Football League reduced the width of their goal posts from 18.5 feet to 2-feet how many kickers could kick a field goal? Obviously very few and even those that could would need to train differently and have the physical abilities to achieve the required results. This example is analogous to the tightening of tolerances for AQL (Acceptable Quality Levels) the pharmaceutical industry now applies to packaging. The industry is reacting to stricter regulatory requirements and the goal of minimizing the risk of packaging related product recalls. As stated in a recent article, “…quality requirements do not end as pills or vials come off the production line-they must be extended through all packaging steps, and the packaging itself can be subjected to a comparable level of quality assurance”. In light of this the sampling and inspection methodologies used by packaging companies that worked in the past are no longer acceptable and must be changed in order to comply with today’s uncompromising quality requirements. To make it more challenging packaging manufacturers are faced with shortened lead times and just-in-time production schedules that cannot tolerate line stoppages for packaging defects. At DISC we have committed the time and resources to meet these challenges and have built a workflow that incorporates advanced inline inspection technologies and quality protocols throughout our manufacturing process. From beginning to end we’ve invested in equipment and software that support our manufacturing team with the goal of shipping zero defects.
New Printing Technology with Inline Machine Vision Inspection The common sampling process used by the printing industry for print inspection is to pull a sheet during the press run at set intervals for a high probability of defect detection. At DISC, we recognized that to achieve zero defect levels in the finished cartons required real-time inline machine based inspection in addition to a sampling program. In 2013 we invested in a new Komori printing press with an integrated Print Quality Assessment System with high resolution digital cameras that photograph and inspect sheets in real time. If a defect is detected an alarm sounds and a tab is automatically inserted in the run thereby isolating the sheet or sheets within the run. Please click on the link below to access a video on this exciting new technology: http://discgraphics.com/services/printing