Enhanced Line Control Module prevents Leap Year labelling errors
The Marco Trac-IT Line Control Module (LCM) is specifically designed to eliminate labelling errors before product leaves the plant or pack-house. This essential tool for food manufacturers and packers is now available with enhanced QA capabilities including pattern matching technology using the latest high resolution optical recognition (OCR) techniques.
The number of food product recalls and withdrawals from supermarkets has increased steadily over the past 12 months, especially for label related issues. This is caused by a wide range of manufacturing issues including: increased label complexity, increased consumer demand for prepared pre-packaged products and increased pressures from retailers to meet demands and delivery schedules. Added to this are the potential problems associated with the fact that 2012 is a leap year.
Some labelling systems will not recognise the extra day in February and the date code will have to be adjusted manually. If this is not done it could lead to product having its displayed ‘use by date’ extended by one day, which may have serious consequences for critical perishable foods. Labels bearing an erroneous date such as April 31st or 29th Feb in a non leap year are relatively easy to spot, but product wrongly labelled towards the end of February 2012 would still display a valid March date albeit one day out, making the error much harder to detect.
One thing is clear - wrongly labelled products threaten brand reputation and create a financial exposure for the manufacturer that is unsustainable and must be eradicated. Companies need a system to manage this risk automatically so that they police 100% of their production. With pressures increasing from supermarkets in parallel with growing consumer awareness, nothing less than 100% will suffice.
The Marco Trac-IT Line Control Module (LCM) is specifically designed to eliminate labelling errors before product leaves the plant or pack-house. This essential tool for food manufacturers and packers is now available with enhanced QA capabilities including pattern matching technology using the latest high resolution optical recognition (OCR) techniques.
Marco’s MD Murray Hilborne is clear on the importance of incorporating these latest enhancements to ensure ongoing effective line control: “It is vital that we keep ahead of the game when it comes to eliminating the problems associated with wrongly labelled product. As labels become more complex, effective bar code reading technologies still remain an important tool, but they only provide limited line data during the label verification process. By comparison, these latest pattern matching techniques are highly effective in identifying a much broader range of labelling issues. They can be programmed to recognise a diverse range of characters and images including erroneous dates such as 31st Sept as well as identifying instances of incorrectly positioned or missing labels.”
Source: Marco
