On Technology

Two of the topics covered in this issue of packagePRINTING made me think back to "the good old days" when I worked in manufacturing. The article starting on p. 26 discusses the benefits of business information integration, and on p. 16, the cover story highlights the application of vision inspection systems in pharmaceutical label production.

What jumps out at me very clearly is how far the technologies in these two areas have come since I first experienced their application in the mid-to-late 1980s. First let me talk about information systems.

In one of my roles in the plant, I was responsible for packaging materials, including not just technical aspects (specs, processing, etc.), but also understanding and reducing packaging costs. This was critical since packaging acquisition costs were in the neighborhood of 60 percent of brand cost.

I worked closely with a cost accountant at the end of each month (not quite real-time) to understand and generate cost reports. Wow, was this fun! All receiving and materials consumption was reported manually, so it was not unusual to be off a little bit. As a matter of fact, there were times when it appeared that we actually produced some of our incoming supplies since we ended up with more than we received. (Occasionally, losing the paperwork on a truck shipment or two wasn't out of the ordinary.) We would spend hours tracking down the information to make some sense of what had actually occurred. (As a side note, I did get to know the cost accountant pretty well, and it was through this mutual friendship that I met my wife. So, it was hardly wasted time for me.)

Moving out to the manufacturing floor, my plant was a relatively early adopter of a vision inspection system. Its purpose was simply to detect the presence of labels, along with some attempts to monitor label positioning. The system worked well at times, but needed constant attention, usually from higher level technical support. So, one system that was installed was eventually taken off the line and a second system never made it out of the box.

Now, about 25 years later, I don't believe a manufacturing company could stay in business for long without the use of an effective MIS and vision inspection for quality assurance. Information systems are highly automated and integrated so that information is entered once (usually automated) and then disseminated wherever it's needed throughout the entire business enterprise. And vision systems now provide reliable 100 percent inspection of text and other minute details far beyond whether the label is present or not. This type of quality inspection capability is not just expected, but required for suppliers to such markets as pharmaceuticals.

We've come a long way, baby!

Tom Polischuk, Editor-in-Chief

We welcome your comments regarding any part of packagePRINTING. They can be addressed to Editor, packagePRINTING, 1500 Spring Garden St., 12th Floor, Philadelphia, PA 19130, or tpolischuk@napco.com.

Brian C. Ludwick, VP/Publisher 
719-686-9009, bludwick@napco.com