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Four Ways to Increase Efficiencies While Protecting Your Brand
Maximizing efficiency on the line is a top goal for today’s manufacturers, who face concurrent challenges based on their operating environment and producing a safe and compliant product. Advanced x-ray systems can be deployed to find and remove contaminants that pose safety hazards and determine product flaws, but can also be used to improve efficiencies, from time, money, energy and labor standpoints.
Heading into a new year and decade, virtually every manufacturer is facing the same challenges: protecting their products and brands, working towards higher production goals, striving to prevent recalls, bolstering traceability and contending with a tough labor market. Although there may be simultaneous challenges, manufacturers can take advantage of equipment that performs multiple functions and offer a variety of benefits, including ensuring food safety and improving efficiencies.
Advanced inspection systems, for example, have a primary function of detecting physical contaminants that can cause food safety problems, from injuries to recalls. X-ray systems help ensure product safety and compliance by performing important quality checks, all while improving inline efficiencies.
Here are four ways you can use x-ray machines to improve efficiencies:
Time efficiency
Look for features like quick product setup and changeover to minimize downtime on your line, allowing you to keep up with high line speeds and hit production goals. Advanced x-ray systems, with the latest-generation software, also perform simultaneous quality checks, automatically and quickly checking things like fill level, mass measurement or the component count. Other time-saving features are available for today’s manufacturers, such as the Product Switch™ function that allows items with different inspection requirements to run on the same line.
Cost efficiency
Time is money, of course, so a system that saves time also saves manufacturers money. In addition, x-ray machines are more cost-effective than other types of detection tools that are less versatile and multifunctional, helping improve Overall Equipment Effectiveness. Advanced inspection systems offer a lower total cost of ownership with innovative designs, powerful software and rugged construction.
Energy efficiency
At a time when those in the food and beverage industries are keeping a closer eye on energy efficiency, they are looking for equipment that enables them to rein in energy use and energy costs. One example is the new Eagle EPX100-S for packaged products, an extension of the original EPX100 low-energy, high-value detection, greener system that also offers a smaller floor footprint. Other Eagle systems are designed with energy-efficient features as well, like the Eagle Pack 400 HC with an energy-efficient water-cooled heat exchanger that eliminates the need for a separate air conditioning unit to cool the system.
Labor efficiency
It’s increasingly challenging to find and retain employees, leading to the need for equipment that saves labor or frees up employees to do other critical work. One way to do that is to take advantage of systems like advanced inspection machines that are easy to operate, with software that provides easy-to-read onscreen diagnostics and on-demand or routine calibration, like Eagle’s VALIDATE™ and AUTOCAL™ features, with the push of a button. Also, by using advanced inspection systems, operators can virtually eliminate false rejects that require manual rework.
Keep Your Fruit and Vegetable Operations Compliant with Inline Technology
Given the fact that most produce originates in fields, trees, and in the great outdoors, there are opportunities for environmental foreign material to mix with good products as they are collected and sent to food manufacturers for further processing. X-ray machines find and remove contaminants in the bulk flow part of the process, as well as other critical control points in production, to ensure that fruit and vegetable manufacturers and packagers are compliant with food safety standards and regulations. X-ray inspection systems also help ensure product quality and integrity.
The popular saying, “Money doesn’t grow on trees” is true, but for produce manufacturers, it could be lost there via hazards introduced in the production process for fruits and vegetables.
Contaminants, ranging from broken bottles near walnut trees to rocks mixed in with collected beans to whole golf balls harvested with potatoes, pose food safety risks downstream in the production process. At another critical control point down the line, other contaminants could also be introduced. For example, parts of a sieve may accidentally break off, introducing fine pieces of wire in product.
These examples are ubiquitous real-world scenarios in the food manufacturing industry. Such hazards not only pose great risk for food safety and product integrity, but are also the basis for non-compliance with food safety regulations leading to costly product recalls.
X-ray systems, including those with the capability to detect foreign bodies previously unseen by x-ray can locate hard-to-find contaminants in dense busy application images and are important safety tools for critical control points (CCPs). These CCPs are the basis for a company’s HACCP program, which in turn are used to show compliance with other global standards, such as ISO, Safe Quality Food (SQF) programs and the BRC global standard for food safety, among others. HACCP is also part of practice controls required for compliance with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in the U.S.
As part of food safety diligence and compliance efforts, traceability has become a priority for many food and beverage companies in recent years. Eagle’s proprietary software delivers greater traceability at a time when manufacturers must demonstrate to their retail and foodservice customers their capability to find product information quickly. For example, Eagle’s TraceServer software allows for the retrieval of information and images from a central database, if there is a question about a particular batch or product during a review, audit or recall.
X-ray systems provide comprehensive inspection capabilities and excel in a multitude of fruit and vegetable products and packaging types. Fruit and vegetable companies commonly utilize x-ray technology to inspect fresh, frozen, bulk, canned or unpackaged items, for finished products including fresh (raw) fruits and vegetables, mixed fruits, fruit salads, jams/jellies, juices, purees, salad kits and more. Package applications are equally broad, including trays, pouches and bags, cartons, boxes and cases, metal tubs and tall rigid containers, among others.
Recent studies have shown the demand for plant-based foods are now higher than ever. Along with this market growth are increasingly stringent food and safety regulations around the world. Produce manufacturers utilizing Eagle x-ray inspection systems facilitate product safety and quality while protecting their brand reputation from an expensive recall and bad publicity.
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