For any corrugated manufacturer, the top points of concern usually come down to whether all glue joints are being glued properly and whether all boxes produced are accurately square. With those top-two priorities so easy to identify it is no shock that there are a ton of incredibly effective industrial machines designed to deliver exact boxes every time. In fact, it is likely that your manufacturing line rarely produces these types of errors already, but as you know there is almost no acceptance for even a single corrugated box fault. When you work in an industry where a common defect rate target is to have no more than 1 defect for every 3 million boxes produced, there is, in fact, no room for error at all. Just a few issues found in your manufacturer’s gap or a couple failed glue laps found in one of your shipments and your operation is in trouble.
As you know, when you ship a trailer full of 2 or 2.5 million good boxes, it is difficult not to be concerned that any customer that finds 2 faulty boxes could mean that they decide to ship the rest of the pallets back to your plant. Then you will have to hire additional labor to re-inspect those pallets of boxes. Such scenarios, are the type of outcome that costs you money, time and customer trust in an incredibly competitive corrugated manufacturing industry. Even if they only have 1 defective box, it still may create troubles requiring you to reassure an angry customer who had a single faulty box cause an equipment jam that cost them thousands of dollars. Avoiding even small corrugated defect issues is important as every failure costs your operations money and customer trust. That is not counting the time you must spend to reassure valuable customers about the quality of your corrugated manufacturing operations. But when the difference between perfection is 0 defects in 3 million, acceptable but not amazing is 1 defect in 3 million, and totally unacceptable is 2 defective boxes out of 3 million corrugated boxes – what are you supposed to do?
Quality inspection and vision inspection systems can change your corrugated manufacturing reality. With the right quality inspection technology, you will never have to worry about your target defect rates being missed. A quality inspection system can identify every single fault in every single corrugated box that runs through your operational line during high-speed operations. You will never have two defective boxes shipped. Even if your equipment struggles during a run and produces five defective boxes, all five boxes can be identified and ejected before being shipped to any of your customers. No return shipments and no phone calls with your customers about jams that cost thousands of dollars.
There is a wide range of inspection equipment possibilities. Here are key capabilities that would likely assist your corrugated manufacturing operations:
- Proper Glue on Manufacturer’s Seam – vision inspection systems are available to check and ensure proper glue placement on every box produced while operating at high speeds.
- Square Box Checking – making sure each box you manufacture is perfectly square can be accomplished with a quality inspection system. Typically, measurements of each box are scanned to validate proper folds and adhesive glue or tape applications. Such inspection systems prevent your customers from experiencing automatic packing machine jams often caused by not accurately squared boxes.
- Manufacturer’s Gap Inspections – will scan each box to verify the proper manufacturer’s gaps. Sometimes these systems are combined or coordinated with square box-checking systems mentioned above.
- Print & Imagery Inspection Systems – these print inspection and print registration systems serve the important role of making sure the imagery and colors of every box are correct. This includes corrugated checks for hickies, missing prints, color density failures or misaligned imagery on folds.
- Corrugated Box Score Validations – such systems check that box scores are the proper depth and placed accurately to make sure they will all fold properly.
- Board Layer Inspections – are designed to visually inspect various corrugated board layers (face-layer, corrugated middle, bottom layer) and check for any signs of delay.
- Label Scans – similar to print inspection systems, but label scanning is focused solely on verifying UPC, barcodes, or similar labels for integrity. This can include labels printed actively being printed on the line as well as checking preprinted codes.
The product and system improvements available to corrugated box manufacturers through the types of quality inspection and vision inspection systems outlined above are substantial. Individual systems can be purchased for the most pressing concerns of each individual manufacturer and plant. While inspecting proper adhesive placement on each manufacturer’s seam and square box-checking would apply to all corrugated operations, print and imagery inspection is more valuable for plants producing the attractive and appealing boxes found at the ends of the grocery store aisles filled with products for sale.
The benefits of inspection systems are the total certainty your manufacturing plant can have regarding the quality of every single corrugated box that leaves your factory. The goal is no longer to have no more than 1 defect for every 3 million boxes produced. The reality is that you should not even have a single defective box in 30 million boxes. Think about what worries you most when a new shipment of corrugated boxes is sent to a customer. Which quality or a vision inspection system(s) could check to make sure that every 1 in a million defect is removed. Inspection systems will give you total confidence in your product, and they can help your bottom line as well. Stop hiring additional labor to re-inspect returned pallets of boxes. Get the right quality and/or visual inspection systems to take your operations to the next level. It will help with your operations, and will probably help you let go of some stress and concern wondering when your next customer will be calling about two faulty boxes.
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Learn about Valco Melton’s industry-leading quality and vision inspections systems:
Valco Melton’s ClearVision® Camera Inspection Systems offer an all-in-one quality assurance program that guarantees zero-defect boxes. ClearVision® systems include:
- GlueChek – inspects every glue pattern and ensures quality production.
- FoldChek – inspects each manufacturer’s gap for width and skew defects.
- BundleChek – automatically removes defective boxes.
- BoxChek7 Inspection Software– collects complete information on production line performance.
- ScoreChek – ensures the integrity of corrugator scorelines on your sheets.
- PrintChek – is a full sheet inline print detection system used to inspect spots, registration (color-to-color and color to cut), stripes, scratches, color, missing print, smearing, double print/ghosting, drying, delta-e color density, and skew.
- GapChek – measures the lead gaps, trail gaps, and skew for 100% of all boxes in a bundle.
- RegChek – inspects print / graphic variation and quality.
- InsertChek – inspection system for special labels on boxes.
- CodeChek – inspection system for barcodes.
- MeasurementChek Remote Data Collection System – collect data from your production line to improve operations.