Award Winning Bottler for Global Brand
Chooses CI-Vision as Standardized Vision Provider
As an Asia-Pacific leading beverage manufacturer, and a major bottler and distributor for a variety of brand name cola products, quality assurance and production schedules are crucial. Vision Inspection was the ideal solution to ensuring quality at high production speeds. But only one competitor offered the ease of use and performance results they required.
Using their south East Asia distribution network throughout, the Cola Company relies on this manufacturer to produce and supply their top brands, some producing annual sales of over $1 billion. As a partner to this major Cola Company, the manufacturer recognized a need for vision inspection to provide correctly branded products before reaching retail shelves and consumers.
Voted by their larger partner, two years in a row, as the most efficiently operated bottling plant in the world, this bottler knew vision inspection could offer them a competitive advantage they needed in order to stay on top. With a production schedule made up of 16 different brands, reliability and ease of use at every operating level was of high importance to the management team in order to ensure the quality initiative at the plant. Once they decided to implement vision inspection, they wanted to choose the best suited solution for their needs.
METTLER TOLEDO became the clear choice after a MT representative provided a trial system to be tested on their factory floor. After seeing how intuitive our standard was to navigate and operate, the management team determined CI-Vision’s system was easiest to operate, set-up, perform changeovers and maintain compared to its competitors. Within a few days into the trial, the bottler placed an order for a standard 3-camera Filled Bottle Inspection (FBI) system.
The standard Filled Bottle Inspection (FBI) Solution is IP54 rated.
The vision systems detects two foreign particles highlighted in the red boxes.
The specifications required inspections speeds of 600 bpm, with accurate performance for applications including printed code verification, cap quality, and foreign debris detection. Station 1, installed directly after the ink-jet-printer, consists of one camera verifying accuracy and presence of printed ink jet codes. Without accurate printed codes, beverage manufacturers lack the ability to support product tracking throughout the supply chain, therefore potentially violating compliance regulations. However, METTLER TOLEDO vision solutions ensure any bottle with missing or misprinted codes will be rejected from the production line before reaching retailer shelves.
Station 2 makes up the majority of the solution which consists of two cameras inside an IP54 rated vision enclosure providing cap quality assurance. Two cameras mounted at approximately 120 degrees apart, with two backlights on the opposite side to illuminate bottles and caps, check for cap height, cap skew, tamper-band integrity and detect any clear PET bottle with low fill. Any product outside of these set tolerances will be detected, tracked and rejected by the vision system, maintaining their award winning reputation for efficiency.
An additional inspection station of one camera was designed to be added to the main system to detect for foreign particles, either rubber or metal fragments that might have dropped in during the filling process. In order to perform an inspection of the bottom of the bottle, a side-grip-conveyor is implemented to suspend the bottle in the air, and using one-camera, protected within a stainless steel box, the camera located directly below the bottle will detect any foreign particulates that might have collected in the bottom.
Using a METTLER TOLEDO expertly designed vision solution, the manufacturer’s bottled products are ensured to meet quality specifications, from proper fill level to correctly printed codes, significantly reducing any risk of packaging defects from ever reaching the retailer shelf.