Combination of paper and printed image inspection provides reliable quality assurance and transparency in value creation

Darmstadt / Weinfelden (CH) – The family-owned Swiss packaging manufacturer, Model AG Group, is automating the quality assurance of its corrugated board and printing production with systems from ISRA VISION. The producer of well-known packaging for brand names such as Lindt or Nespresso will use the wide range of solutions from the Darmstadt-based specialist for industrial image processing on one of its large production lines. To this end, Model AG is acquiring two different solutions for paper and print inspection from one source, thus benefiting from the advantages of a single-source partnership. 

The increasing demands on quality on the global market require that even renowned suppliers of state-of-the-art packaging solutions provide precisely documented quality. The Swiss Model AG, one of the world’s largest producers of packaging, manufactures more than 2.3 million tons of packaging material annually in its 924 NTRS printing machine using various paper and printing materials. To ensure its products are of the highest quality and in order to use inspection data for root cause analysis of defects, the Swiss packaging producer specifically focused on a system combination using optical inspection technology made by ISRA VISION. Key reasons for this decision included the ability to precisely classify defects and to keep a continuous log of defects with a statistics display for each individual job.

Quality assurance along the entire process chain was a particular challenge as the company not only prints finished packaging, but also produces packaging materials such as the corrugated board itself. The wide range of products and services provided by ISRA VISION offered the right solutions: both PaperMASTER for paper or cardboard inspection and CartonSTAR for the inspection of printed cardboard materials guarantee a reliable quality control throughout the entire packaging production value chain. 

Full service for paper and print inspection from a single source

“Our customers are increasingly demanding that we monitor our production and be able to track all orders. Until now, we could not explain the reasons behind almost one-half of the interruptions in the paper machine,” reports Ulf Schroeder of Model AG. It was the exceptional reliability, along with the customers’ special quality requirements, that ultimately led to choosing the combined inspection solution from ISRA. All defects, such as color spots, printing deviations, inclusions in paper or contaminations, are reliably detected and classified by the systems. 

Faulty cardboards pieces can be safely removed from the production process, so that only flawless printing quality is delivered to the customer, thereby satisfying demands for a zero-defect production. Damaged edges or tears on paper margins in particular can result in paper web breaks on the rewinder or corrugated board machine and lead to machine downtime. ISRA and its PaperMASTER provide a perfect system combination of web inspection system (WIS) and web break monitoring (WBM) designed to prevent such interruptions.

Wide acceptance from machine operators to quality managers

Along with precise defect detection, PaperMASTER and CartonSTAR offer an impressive classification performance. “The acceptance of the systems among all of our employees is outstanding – from machine operators to foremen and production managers to quality managers. The systems provide us with a reliable tool for identifying defects early on,” says Schroeder. The follow-up order for two more CartonSTAR systems underscores Model AG’s high level of satisfaction.

The number of production shutdowns at Model AG’s production line has been reduced to a minimum since the installation of the inspection systems. And thanks to the detailed logging, defects can be tracked at any time while customers can be provided with even better documentation of the quality processes. Model AG has ensured a continuous inspection of the entire production process with the installation of the system combination of paper and printed image inspection from ISRA VISION – for the highest product quality and customer satisfaction.