Quality control and quality assurance are two highly significant parameters of manufacturing and packaging. Though the cornerstone of both activities remains delivery of quality, there is a vast difference in their orientations. Quality control focuses on the product with an aim of detection of defects in finished product. Quality assurance focuses on the process with an aim of preventing defects.
For packaging, quality control checks are performed during the process and after an entire batch of product is ready. QC checks sometimes involve random sampling method as it may not be feasible to check every product container. Quality check of packaging is usually done by a visual inspection process where QC team checks a pre-determined number of sample containers from a batch.
The companies apply stringent QC acceptance rate and the batch is passed only if there are a small percentage of defective products. However even if the batch passes it cannot guarantee that 100% of the containers are free from any packaging defect.
Companies are now incorporating quality assurance techniques to reduce the number of defective packaged products during the packaging process itself. This ensures higher rate of acceptance during the quality control check. As quality assurance reduces the rejection rate of products, the biggest advantage it offers is cost reduction.
Vision inspection system is a valuable tool for quality assurance of induction cap sealing packaging process. It inspects bottles, caps, wads and labels. The system checks for defects on surface of caps, wad, body of the bottles, lip area of the bottle and label positioning. The vision inspection is accompanied by an auto-rejection system that rejects the defective bottles before and after the sealing process.
The result is reduction of rejected bottles after the final packaging and hence improves the quality control pass percentage. The reports generated helps to identify the root cause of the problem and take required steps.
Similarly, a seal integrity testing machine is another beneficial tool that contributes to the quality assurance process. A thermal camera is employed to detect and reject defective seals. The seal detection capabilities detect presence of wad, flipped of wad, tilted wad and quality of seal including weak seal, leaky seal, burnt seal, etc.
These tools and designs work effectively without slowing down the speed of the packaging line and contributes to cost and time efficiency. Induction cap sealing is widely used for packaging of bottles and jars for various applications including food and beverage, pharmaceuticals and healthcare, personal care, cosmetics, chemicals, etc. A cap sealed container guarantees that the product ensures freshness retention, no leakage, no contamination, and tamper evidence. A sealed container ascertains a mark of trust for the consumer.
Author: Vivek Chinoy, marketing director at Sigma CapSeal, Electronics Devices Worldwide
