Packaging Corner: Maintain consistency with case marking

Marking products and cases with identification coding and other information during their manufacture or during packaging, while they’re in transit on a production line, can be a tremendous challenge. That’s due to the variety of printing technologies and systems in the marketplace.

“Historically, communicating directly to different types of printing technologies used on the same line, throughout a facility, or even at different geographic locations, has been extremely complicated—if not impossible,” says Antonio Cortes, product manager at Matthews Marking Systems. “That’s because there has never been a universal print management system available that could interface with, and direct the operation of, multiple print heads.”
 
To address that challenge, Matthews Marking developed the MPERIA universal controller platform. The system communicates seamlessly—through wireless or Ethernet connections—with high-resolution piezoelectric inkjet, thermal inkjet and valve jet print heads from any manufacturer across multiple production lines in multiple locations, MPERIA also connects with enterprise resource planning (ERP) and warehouse management systems (WMS) to populate production information into templates maintained in a centralized database.
 
This capability allows operations that produce the same product in multiple locations to maintain consistency in code appearance and placement. That’s important for companies concerned with consistent product branding and messaging. That level of accuracy is also critical for meeting stringent track-and-trace regulations, such as those required of pharmaceutical and medical products, says Cortes.
 
“In addition, MPERIA easily manages hundreds of formats needed to comply with local country messaging requirements,” he adds. “And, it helps co-packers who must accommodate the coding placement requests of their customers, or risk chargebacks for non-compliance.”
 
Without a centralised controller, information output by each print head has to be manually entered or modified at its line-side controller. “If a production line has multiple print heads, that means an operator has to visit each control panel and key in the changes,” he says. “Not only does that process take a lot of time, there’s the potential for mistakes, resulting in wasted productivity and scrap.”
 
Barry Baldock, Xact Director explains “the controller can also be integrated with scanners and other materials handling production line control systems”.
In short, “Mperia seamlessly integrates product marking with plant operations and customer databases,” says Barry Baldock, Xact’s Director. “The result is that customers can automate coding, reduce marking errors, and provide valuable traceability information for their products.”
 
 

PPMA SHOW 2014

Xact’s Director, Barry Baldock said,  “We chose to launch our latest integrated coding solution ‘Mperia’ at the PPMA Show as it is the UK’s leading processing and packaging exhibition.  We have been blown away by the interest in our products and we came away from the show with some great quality leads. 

The show provided us with the opportunity to showcase our latest coding technology from Matthews Marking Systems whilst at the same time allowing us to network with new and existing customers from a wide range of industries. Xact’s checkweighing systems and labelling solutions always attract interest from our visitors.  For us, the PPMA Show is our  opportunity to meet existing customers and almost without fail new business gained should cover the cost of exhibiting and so we would intend to continue to exhibit at the PPMA show in future years”.

 

PLEASE CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING YOU TUBE LINK TO SEE XACT’S SALES MANAGER, CHRIS JOLLY BEING INTERVIEWED FOR PPMA TV:

www.youtube.com/watch