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CONTROL OF LID POSITIONING
AND DATAMATRIX READING ON YOGURT CUPS​

In the food industry, even the slightest failure can render a product unsellable. An absent or illegible expiration date means an entire batch cannot be distributed. A misaligned seal creates a risk of product leakage. But beyond these essential checks, industrial vision now brings something new: by automatically reading data matrices, it provides these manufacturers with traceability that they simply did not have before.

THE CHALLENGE

Our client, a player in the agri-food industry, already had vision systems integrated into their production lines. However, these devices proved to be faulty or insufficiently effective to meet the demands of a challenging industrial environment.

It is in this context that CODA Systems was called upon: initially to take over the programming of the existing vision system, and then to optimize all the programs running on the other machines in the line.

The controls to be ensured focused on three points for each yogurt pot:

  • Centering of the lid : verification of the correct positioning of the sealing film
  • Presence of the date : detection of the mandatory mention of the expiration date
  • Reading the datamatrix : reading the code to ensure product traceability

PROJECT COMPLEXITY


This project presented several major technical constraints that conditioned the entire approach:

  • Required equipment : cameras and lighting already in place, with no possibility of replacement. All improvements had to be made with the existing equipment.
  • High production rate : 30 strokes per minute, or 12 lids per stroke: which represents 360 yogurts checked every minute, or 6 pots analyzed per second. The slightest latency in image processing directly results in errors or line stoppages.
  • Wide variety of references : the system had to be robust and configurable enough to adapt to many product variants without performance degradation.

METHODOLOGY


To address these challenges, our engineer intervened at two levels:

  • Hardware optimizations :  without altering the existing equipment, several adjustments to the setup have been made: repositioning of the lighting, angles of view, camera settings. These modifications, seemingly minor, have significantly improved the quality of the images entering the system, a necessary condition for any reliability in control.
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  • Redesign and software improvement : on the main machine, a completely new vision program has been developed, designed to precisely meet the site's requirements for speed and versatility. On the secondary machines, existing programs have undergone optimization work aimed at reducing errors and improving stability over time.

RESULTS

Two major gains emerge from this intervention:

  • Before the intervention of our teams, the false rejection rate was close to 70%. Now, the false rejection rate is very close to 0%. This significantly reduces dry losses.

  • The implementation of complete product traceability, made possible by the effective reading of datamatrix codes. A feature that simply did not exist before the intervention of CODA Systems, and which now meets the growing demands for quality, food safety, and regulatory compliance.

A PROJECT?

If you would like to share a project or need more information, our team is at your disposal.

 CONTACT CODA​​​​