Background
SB Packaging, established in 1992, is one of India’s leading companies in the food and hygiene packaging sectors. SB Packaging was the first ISO 9001 certified flexible packaging company in India and is a pioneer in adopting new technologies.
Challenges
Over the past few years, the print and packaging industry has become increasingly competitive with growing demands for both improved print quality and competitive prices.
To meet these demands, SB Packaging – like other printers and converters needing to reduce costs – increased production speeds and shortened job run times. Unfortunately, the high printing speed meant that most print defects are only spotted during the post-print quality check, after which the job is rejected. Such rejections increased rework and raw material wastage, which decreased productivity and profitability.
The company uses a 9-color rotogravure printing machine. Typical print jobs on the machine include printing of high quality flexible packaging material for branded food and hygiene companies. As the quality and finish required are high, so are the tolerances low during the final quality check. In order to meet the high standards of their quality-conscious customers, while simultaneously maintaining a low rejection rate and high productivity, the management at SB Packaging needed a way to ensure consistent and high quality print output, and approached A.T.E. for help.
Solution
After an evaluation, A.T.E. suggested DetectAXIS – an intelligent supervisor for print defect detection for rotogravure printing machines.
About DetectAXIS
A.T.E.’s DetectAXIS is a 100% print defect detection system. It scans the entire web width for print defects, using line scan camera-based cutting-edge smart imaging technology and captures sharp and ‘near-print quality’ images of the print web at full production speeds.
Result
After the DetectAXIS was installed, SB Packaging has observed:
- Instant print defect detection
- Precise, consistent, and improved print quality
- Reduced material rejection at quality check
- Process improvements when operators learn about repeating defects
- Lesser rework, increased productivity