NESTLÉ chooses HEUFT again!

HEUFT HACCP inspection systems for baby food producers

For many years now Nestlé in Norway has been producing baby food products for most of the Scandinavian countries and was looking for the latest state-of-the-art control equipment, in order to keep up to date with the ever increasing focus and demands of quality control and to comply with the HACCP (Hazard Analysis of Critical Control Points) regulations. After thoroughly researching the market Nestlé made the choice to co-operate with HEUFT and its comprehensive experience in order to design a custom-made vision turnkey solution.

Words like sugar free and gluten free are becoming more and more common to the daily users. Especially for children with diabetes it can be disastrous to their health if they eat food with sugar or other ingredients. HEUFT supplied Nestlé with a barcode check some years ago, which ensures that the customer gets the right product, with the right label, and an empty bottle inspector to check for small faults in the jars, such as glass pieces, dirt, spiders, carton dust etc. before filling.

Recently these control systems were upgraded with the new vision based HEUFT FinalView, to check both the all around label and safety strip for correct position, logo, colour, upside down and flagging label. The vacuum is checked in such a way that different closure colours, dirt and moisture have no influence. The closure is also examined to check that the colour is correct, that the inkjet best before marking is present, in the correct position and legible. After working with the systems for some months Mr. Kristian Lang-Ree, the technical manager, reports that the daily routine for the operators has now been established. They were impressed with the easy handling of the advanced vision technique upon which the HEUFT reflexx is based.

All the different bottle sizes, labels and closure dresses are fixed programmed, so it only takes a few seconds to change a program. With the automatic teach-in function it is easy to program new dresses. All programs are stored on a central HEUFT Gateway Server that can keep thousands of programs on the hard disk. Beside that the server is the access point to the HEUFT TeleService. The TeleService makes it possible for the HEUFT help desk to log on and give instant assistance if technical support is needed without waiting for a service technician to arrive. Detailed analysis tools, such as the logic analyser and the soft oscilloscope, quickly help the experienced technician in Germany to find the fault in order to take the necessary action.
Software upgrades can also be uploaded via this connection. Production data, with detailed information about the efficiency, produced and rejected jars, is automatically sent via the HLAN (HEUFT Local Area Network) to the Nestlé database for production optimisation and analysis.

All these technological advantages help Nestlè to succeed:

"We want to be able to serve all consumers throughout their whole lives. And all the while, we won´t compromise on safety and quality..."

Peter Brabeck - CEO Nestlé
Harvard Business Review
February 2001