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BARCODE READING AND MACHINE VISION SOLUTIONS

FOR FOOD AND BEVERAGE APPLICATIONS
Cognex technology helps ensure food traceability, safety and quality
In no other industry are the incentives to guarantee product
safety, quality and packaging integrity as great as they are in
the food and beverage industry. The negative effects of recalls
and damage to brand reputation are so acute that food and
beverage manufacturers have been on the leading edge of
successful deployment and use of machine vision technology
to ensure product safety.
Food and beverage manufacturers look to machine vision and
barcode readers to help them remain in compliance with new
regulations, ensure customer confidence and mitigate risks.
Whether for traceability, allergen management, assembly
verification or quality control, Cognex offers the widest
selection of DataMan industrial barcode readers and powerful
In-Sight vision systems to meet tough packaging, safety and
quality goals.

Food Safety Modernization Act: US Gets Serious About Food Safety

The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) estimates that each year
48 million people get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die
from foodborne diseases. To combat this significant health threat,
Congress passed the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which addresses food
safety across the supply chain from farm to table. This landmark
legislation focuses on a science-based approach to preventing
food-safety problems and it empowers the FDA with mandatory
recall authority to better respond to and contain problems when
they do occur.
The FDA has provided these 7 foundational rules for implementing
the FSMA:
Preventive Controls for Human Foodrequires that food
facilities have written safety plans that set forth how they will
identify and minimize hazards.
Preventive Controls for Animal Foodestablishes Current
Good Manufacturing Practices (CGMPs) and preventive
controls for food for animals.

Produce Safetyestablishes science-based standards for

growing, harvesting, packing and holding produce on domestic
and foreign farms.
Foreign Supplier Verification Programrequires importers
to verify that food imported into the United States has been
produced in a manner that provides the same level of public
health protection as that required of U.S. food producers.
Third Party Certificationestablishes a program for the
accreditation of third-party auditors to conduct food safety
audits and issue certifications of foreign facilities producing food
for humans or animals.
Sanitary Transportationrequires those who transport food to
use sanitary practices to ensure the safety of food.
Intentional Adulterationrequires domestic and foreign facilities
to address vulnerable processes in their operations to prevent
acts intended to cause large-scale public harm.
For more information on the FSMA, visit www.fda.gov/FSMA

Food Traceability
Food traceability legislation requires that facilities
have systems in place to provide a trail of
information that follows each food item through the
supply chain. To ensure food safety and efficient
recalls, manufacturers must be able to identify
and locate any item in the food supply chain and
quickly trace back its source one step and trace
forward to its destination one step.

Regulations Worldwide
Drive the Need for
Optical Character Recognition
In 2015 the U.S. FDA issued 626
recalls, market withdrawals and
safety alerts for reasons ranging from
salmonella to undeclared ingredients
like milk, soy and nuts. This is not
limited to just U.S. markets. The
International Standards Organization
(ISO) includes tracking and labeling
requirements for most agricultural
products, while Japanese law
includes documenting everything
from agricultural chemicals to
slaughterhouse operations
(Abattoir Law).
Food producers and packagers are
looking at how they can use track
and trace technologies to document
food production automatically and
give their management team better
insight at all levels of the supply
chain in real time. Barcodes are
a traditional solution to track and
trace operations, but consumers
cannot read barcodes. As a result,
many producers are turning to
optical character recognition (OCR)
technology using vision systems that
can read alphanumeric text, as well
as 1-D and 2-D DataMatrix codes,
to track food and beverages from
raw materials to packaged product
at high speeds and with greater
accuracy than manual inspection or
barcodes alone.

To achieve this, many companies are

implementing two-dimensional (2-D) barcodes,
vision systems and industrial image-based
barcode readers as key components in a simple,
yet robust, one up/one back database process
for traceability. DataMatrix codes have been
adopted as the standard machine-readable code
in many applications. Compared to traditional
one-dimensional (1-D) codes, 2-D codes store
much more information in a smaller format, such
as manufacturer, product ID, lot number, expiry
and even a unique serial number on virtually any
finished good.

Label Verification
Compliance with global
barcoding requirements involves
much more than simply reading
a code on a label or package.
To support traceability, it is first
essential to verify code quality
and validate that all of the
encoded data is accurate and
correctly formatted. Cognex
verifiers, image-based barcode
readers and vision systems can be used to grade code quality and create a complete
identification and data validation solution for food and beverage labels and packages.

Brand Protection
Serial number aggregation for supply chain security and product authentication at the
point of sale can help prevent counterfeiting, diversion and sale of product through
unauthorized channels. Cognex products can help avoid legal liabilities and damaged
company reputations caused by counterfeit products reaching customers.

Barcode Reading and Machine Vision Solutions for Food and Beverage Applications

Allergen Management
Mislabeled allergens cause expensive food product recalls. If
packaged foods are missing the list of common food allergens,
such as milk, eggs and peanuts that are in the product or may have
come in contact with the product, it may pose a significant safety
risk to consumers.
Cognex image-based barcode readers and machine vision systems
are used to guarantee that all food and beverage products leaving
a facility meet stringent quality and safety standards. Cognex
products can help with the following list of common allergen
management applications:
Verify the correct label and check position
Detect errors on rolls of labels
Match package to product
Read codes and verify text on flexible films and packages
Read 1-D and 2-D codes and text on labels, flat, curved or
shiny surfaces
Read and verify 2-D codes printed direct on a product or
container surface

Product Quality, Assembly Verification

and Package Inspection
Machine vision systems can be used to ensure food and beverage
products and packaging meet established quality standards.
Identifying non-conforming products early on in the process can
help food manufacturers reduce scrap, improve productivity and
enhance brand image. Using machine vision to automate food
production and assembly lines not only increases the number
of products that can be produced and shipped each day, these
systems also provide manufacturers with 100% quality assurance.
Cognex vision sensors, vision systems and 3D laser displacement
sensors offer cost-effective quality control solutions that help
improve accuracy and throughput. Some of the most common
food and beverage inspection applications include:
Verifying presence of caps and safety seals on bottles
Color sorting and inspection
Automating production with the ability to sort or orient products
for filling or packaging
Detecting presence of inserted or attached leaflets on packaging
Checking for missing, incorrect, or damaged product
Inspecting for particulates or flawed product in
bottles and other packaging
Checking label position

Barcode Reading and Machine Vision Solutions for Food and Beverage Applications

COGNEX PRODUCTS
Industrial Barcode Readers
Cognex image-based barcode readers decode 1-D and 2-D codes,
both printed labels and DPM, fast and reliably, regardless of the
barcode symbology, size, quality, printing method or surface. Patented
algorithms deliver the highest read rates on even the most severely
scratched, warped, angled, or poorly printed codes to help you reduce costs,
increase throughput and control traceability.
www.cognex.com/BarcodeReaders

2D Machine Vision Systems

Cognex In-Sight vision systems are unmatched in their ability to inspect, identify
and guide parts. These self-contained, industrial-grade vision systems combine
a library of advanced vision tools with high-speed image acquisition and
processing. A wide range of models, including line scan and color systems, meet
most price and performance requirements.
www.cognex.com/2DVision

3D Vision Sensors
Cognex 3D displacement sensors optimize product quality by providing accurate
three-dimensional product inspection. Individual sensors can perform detailed
inspections or multiple sensors on wide production lines can simultaneously
generate single high resolution 3D images. The compact, IP65-rated design
withstands even the harshest factory environments.
www.cognex.com/3DVision

Companies around the world rely on Cognex vision and ID to optimize quality, drive down costs and control traceability.
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Copyright 2016, Cognex Corporation.

All information in this document is subject to change
without notice. All Rights Reserved. Cognex,
DataMan and In-Sight are registered trademarks
of Cognex Corporation. All other trademarks are
property of their respective owners.
Lit. No. FSMV-1607

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