Quality Vision

Nosco, Inc. is high on quality. "Compliant or Complaint: Only I Make the Difference," a phrase coined by one of the company's employee owners, reflects the key role Nosco's Quality Lifestyle component plays in every aspect of the company's day-to-day activities. It encompasses not only Nosco's attitude toward the highly sensitive pharmaceutical packaging work it performs, but also the emphasis Nosco places on establishing trust-based relationships with external and internal customers, its habit of product innovation, and its single-minded focus on responsibility and accountability. It also extends to Nosco's strategy of acquiring the most advanced technology—including sophisticated vision inspection systems—to provide comprehensive quality across the board.

A pharmaceutical packaging printer since 1932, but founded as National Office and Supply Company in 1906, Nosco today has facilities in Waukegan and Gurnee, Ill. and Carrollton, Texas. It provides a breadth of products and services for high-end pharmaceutical, nutraceutical, ophthalmic, bio-tech, and medical device packaging. The Waukegan facility produces folding cartons, while the other two facilities produce pressure-sensitive labels and a variety of folded literature including med guides and other forms of patient information. One recent innovation developed by the company is called "Lit-A-Sure," a folding carton with an attached insert that eliminates the need for literature feeding on the production line. In fact, Nosco's new product development area has proven to be a significant value-add for its customers, representing roughly one-third of the company's $75 million in annual revenues.

"Nosco had a slight dip in revenue in 2008-09, but besides that we've increased revenue every year since 2004, and also have a revenue growth plan in place for 2012," says company president Russell Haraf. "That's because of our new product innovation and solutions engineering emphasis, which helped us weather the storm that the overall economy experienced with respect to more mature products."

Quality: More than a buzzword

Nosco's culture of quality has become a moral and ethical foundation for its entire operation, based largely on the fact that its parent company, Holden Industries, headquartered in Deerfield, Ill., is 100 percent employee owned. "Every employee in the company has a financial stake in our success, as well as a livelihood here," notes Haraf.

According to Vice President of Operations John McKeough, Nosco's culture of quality is closely tied to its Lean Manufacturing initiative, since it was a pre-existing condition on which the company was able to implement a process of continuous improvement. "Our Quality Lifestyle extends from what our customers can expect from us, and from each other," he says. "Having employee owners is wonderful when it comes to implementing a Lean Manufacturing toolbox and encouraging employees on the shop floor to bring forward their suggestions for improvement vociferously and often."

"Given the business we're in, that Quality Lifestyle had taken root in 1932 and flourished over the years to the point where employee ownership (which occurred at the end of 2007) was the icing on the cake," adds Haraf. "We simply took it to the next level, and on top of that we've continued to layer innovation, superior customer service, and Lean principles; but really, the foundation was already there."

Nosco's toolbox

Nosco has used automated vision inspection technology across all of its platforms—letterpress, offset, flexographic, and digital, a total of 20 presses companywide—since the late 1990s, employing various systems where they best suited the needs of its customers. Four of the company's vision inspection systems are on-press, with another 15 systems used in a variety of ways at different points in the process.

Digital is a growth area for the company, Haraf says. "It fits into the new product development category, and we're providing both short-run folding cartons and pressure-sensitive labels that way, as well as by conventional means." The company also claims that its ability—using digital—to add security features to a much higher degree than it could using conventional or UV processes results in some "oddball-sized" runs.

There's "no question" that Nosco sees digital printing becoming more of a factor in the markets it serves, notes Haraf. However, "It's important to understand the role each printing technology plays in our business and in the printing industry at large. For the present, we feel we have the right complementary technologies in place to satisfy our customers' needs."

Process discipline

It goes without saying that the biggest hurdle faced by Nosco and other players in the sensitive pharmaceutical packaging industry, is quality. This means, among other things, maintaining all processes in a state of control, and ensuring compliance with complex specifications on what, for Nosco, amounts to around 25,000 jobs annually—"and be able to do that in a disciplined fashion," Haraf says.

These requirements impose a special set of constraints on pharmaceutical packagers, explains Director of Quality Dick Leach, noting that raw material management and effective change control are built into Nosco's approach to quality.

"Customers are creatures of habit and don't want anything to change," he said. "Because customers value consistency and want to avoid issues with their drug components, having a quality system that ensures a consistent source of supply, compliance with material specifications, and material traceability are absolute requirements. In the commercial markets, by contrast, you have a little more flexibility to change your material suppliers job by job to drive costs down. In the pharmaceutical market, it's somewhat different; customers want you make sure you're continuously running the same raw materials, the same inks, the same systems—everything—to ensure the integrity and consistency of the run. By the same token, if you have to change a component for any reason, customers want to be brought into the loop to acknowledge and approve the change by adding it to the specifications or otherwise documenting it."

We're all eyes

To help ensure consistency and compliance, Nosco recently installed Heidelberg's Prinect Inspection Control on its Speedmaster XL 105, installed in it's Waukegan facility in 2008.

Visual inspection technology, in general, is highly beneficial to printers that serve sensitive markets, allowing them to detect and correct defects early in the process, thus avoiding the potential for costly reprinting, loss of business, litigation, fines, and other costs. Developed primarily to address the need in pharmaceutical, specialty, and package printing for zero-defect production, Heidelberg's Prinect Inspection Control is an internally integrated in-line printing and material defect detection system that is designed to locate printing and material defects—hickeys, marking, scumming, scratching, etc.—on every printed sheet as it passes through the coating unit of the press. Defects are captured in real time by comparing every printed sheet with a digital reference. Upon detection, the system provides audible and visual alerts and inserts a tab in the delivery pile to indicate the first occurrence of the defect. If the defect clears itself, an additional tab is inserted into the delivery pile to mark the last defective sheet.

"Out of 50 jobs produced during our validation phase (which lasted a year, Haraf noted), Prinect Inspection Control's vision system identified four jobs with major/critical defects, 14 jobs with minor defects, and 32 jobs with no defects," he said. "The four jobs with major/critical defects had the potential to adversely affect 300,000 sheets if not detected early enough."

Three years later, Nosco Plant Manager Lee Siragusa points to the confidence Nosco's operators now enjoy, thanks to their ability to contain print defects and remove them from the press run without worrying that bad product may have escaped detection. This is especially important when the printed copy contains foreign alphanumeric characters, especially in copy prepared for Asian markets, where undetected defects can change the meaning of the copy and pose a unique quality risk.

"You might also have hickeys or ink spots that would appear in critical copy like dosage requirements," Leach adds. "Those kinds of things are absolutely critical in our industry."

Early detection

Completely integrated in the coating unit of the press, the inspection system incorporates two very high resolution cameras mounted in close proximity to the printing nip. During setup, the image of 25 sheets is captured to create a "golden image" to use as the digital reference file. Inspection Control provides automatic checking of the first sheet against the golden image and 100 percent inspection of every sheet during printing, and can identify defects as small as 0.3 mm. Upon completion of printing, it generates detailed reports that summarize and specify the number and the extent of any defects.

"When you're running the types of speeds and trying to maintain the level of quality we do, a vision system like Prinect Inspection Control is key in early detection of defects," Siragusa said. "When a pressman is looking at 20 or 30 units on a sheet, and has just seconds before pulling another sheet, he can miss defects for a period of time. A vision system like Inspection Control gives you that critical first alert, and gives you time to fix the defect or make a determination that the defect is acceptable."

Adds press operator Craig Mann, who recently was recognized for his 20 years of service at Nosco, "Prinect Inspection Control not only gives us a sense of enhanced confidence, but also the freedom to multitask more effectively. We can do more things concurrently to ensure product quality, and because there are always variables to control in any printing process, we're constantly looking for other things. What's nice about this camera is that while your attention is focused elsewhere, the system will mark a problem area and alert us right away."

By identifying defects more effectively and efficiently, Nosco's vision inspection systems have contributed to wast reduction and improvements in the company's overall material yield. Comparative data on its Speedmaster XL 105 showed a 2.1 percent improvement in material yield, based on more accurate press runs and reduced spoilage allowances, Nosco reports.

Throughout its manufacturing operation, and for pressure-sensitive label applications in particular, Nosco also employs a combination of on- and off-press inspection for rolls of labels post-print and diecutting, to ensure 100 percent inspection across the board.

"Downstream from the press, certain operations add value to the product, so there's a need to inspect again, either visually or by means of a camera after the product has been cut or folded or scored," Haraf says.

Indispensable human element

Asked to describe the challenges attending the implementation of vision inspection systems at Nosco, Haraf explains the initial, psychological hurdle the company had to overcome.

"When we first went to vision technology, we innocently thought that the camera system was going to catch everything for us," he said. "What we quickly discovered, however, is that while there is tremendous power and validity in the technology's ability to identify defects, the really critical thing was having the skilled craft professionals make a determination whether the product would be acceptable to the customer."

In that regard, Nosco's culture of ownership and its Quality Lifestyle make a critical difference. "Anybody can buy a Speedmaster XL 105 with a camera system on it, but you can't just put that into your building and think you're going to produce a high-quality product," says Haraf. "That's where our professional staff of employee-owners comes in, knowing how to both utilize the technology and apply it correctly."

That's important, Siragusa explains, because vision systems have the ability to see defects that are beyond process capability. "We have systems that can see flaws in the materials we run, so when the camera detects a flaw, it might not always be a true defect," he says. "That's why disposition has to happen at the operator level: Is it a true defect that requires action, or merely an apparent flaw that's part of an inherent process variation within the customer specification?"

Even in terms of process variation, if a vision system detects, say, a tiny hickey that comes and goes every several thousand sheets, the operator won't necessarily have to make an adjustment for it. Likewise, Siragusa said, "If the camera detects multiple hickeys, the operator will have to make an informed decision whether to stop and wash the blankets."

The upshot? Even the most sophisticated vision systems have to be "taught" to deal with the capabilities of the printing process—registration, movement, etc.—so that it learns not to stop for every anomaly it sees. Prinect Inspection Control, for example, permits the operator to record and recall acceptable defects so that the system doesn't stop the process. "That way you're not stopping for every single variation that can occur in printing," Mann says. "If you did, you clearly wouldn't get much work. We make determinations like these on every job we run, and there's hardly a job on which the system doesn't pick up something that is within acceptable standards for the printing industry, or on a part of the sheet where copy isn't present and can't affect the accuracy of the job."

"Our folks still have very important jobs when it comes to inspection, because they set the standard for excellence," Haraf explains.

Reject on one

Nosco's culture, with its emphasis on quality and mutual trust, is the linchpin of its business—evident in its attitude toward its external and internal customers alike.

"We like to be able to be able to count on one another and to have our customers count on us to be a solution provider for them, whether that means developing something new or delivering a product a hundred times—100 percent on time, and in compliance with their specifications," Leach says. "Our ultimate goal is to build such a degree of trust with our customers that we can deliver a certified product via a process that takes the cost out of their businesses."

In pharmaceutical packaging, one defect in critical copy is rejectable ("reject on one"). "If I am producing two million folding cartons and I break copy on the dosage information, that would be considered a critical defect and the whole two million lot would be rejected," Siragusa explains.

"If you're running a press at 18,000 sph, while it's relatively easy to keep track of color, there is still a lot of text and potential defects like hickeys, ink spots, paper dust in the substrate, etc.) that put us at risk. Nosco's job is to catch those situations internally, contain them, and get the bad product out," says Haraf.

"We have totally eliminated the need for customers to inspect on their end," Leach reports. "We've come to the point where many of them consider us a certified supplier, meaning our products either come straight into inventory or we'll send them product samples to review without them having to go out and pull samples for inspection." This, he points out, is not generally the rule in regulated industries, where the sensitive and quality-critical nature of incoming products dictates that they are subjected to some type of inspection.

Getting employee buy-in

Not surprisingly, getting employee buy-in when the company's various vision systems were installed dovetailed perfectly with Nosco's culture of quality by enabling employee-operators to understand that these systems were tools to make their jobs easier and better.

"There was skepticism at first," Haraf admits, "which our culture of quality helped us to overcome. We took a year with Heidelberg to learn the technology and apply its attributes properly for the benefit of our business. It didn't happen overnight, just because we bought the camera and turned it on."

Benefits

To be sure, its use of vision inspection technology increases Nosco's customers' confidence in the company as a certified supplier. Among other things, this means that they can reduce their cost of manufacturing by partnering with a company that has the technology and the quality commitment to ensure they can do so with confidence. "However, while our use of vision systems is an important capability we're proud to communicate to our customers, I wouldn't say that it's the be-all, end-all," says Haraf. "It takes the whole system and our culture of ownership to provide the greatest benefit to our customers."