Enpro Inc. Improves Quality Oversight of High-Speed Carbonated Beverage Filling with HID Global
Technology Category
- Networks & Connectivity - RFID
- Sensors - RFID Readers
Applicable Industries
- Electronics
- Recycling & Waste Management
Applicable Functions
- Quality Assurance
Use Cases
- Onsite Human Safety Management
- Visual Quality Detection
Services
- System Integration
- Testing & Certification
The Challenge
Today’s beverage companies rely on automated, high-speed filling lines that operate as a nonstop process flow, producing upwards of 2,500 items per minute per line. The slightest problem on these automated lines—such as a missing vent tube—can have a major operational impact. Enpro Inc. customers needed a way to reliably detect the presence or absence of a vent tube, eliminating the potential for halting the line –as workers manually check for vent tube problems. Notably, if a vent tube is lost or damaged during the filling process, it becomes a safety and quality issue for a beverage manufacturer and large amounts of finished packaged product has to be thrown a way as the missing vent tube is very costly to locate.
The Customer
Enpro Inc.
About The Customer
Enpro Inc. is an Illinois company that provides patented state-of-the-art traceable components and systems to reduce waste and downtime associated with the filling process in the food and beverage industry. Their customers are some of the world’s largest manufacturers in the beverage industry.
The Solution
To address the problem, Enpro Inc. partnered with the largest beverage manufacturers, as well as HID Global, and FEIG Electronics to build a Filler Vent Tube Reader (FVTR) for monitoring vent tube fillers. A robust HF RFID-powered non-contact monitoring solution was identified. A high-frequency reader was also required to support that RFID system. The newly designed FVTR was built with a custom designed and molded SLIX2 HF Ring Tag from HID Global, which is injection molded into the vent tube. FEIG Electronics provided its LRM2500 High Frequency Reader coupled with custom developed Enpro electronics. The combined effort ultimately yielded the world’s fastest HF Reading application. High Frequency (HF) RFID operates at 13.56 MHz and is capable of reading anywhere from 30-800 tags per second depending on the air protocol and implementation by the silicon manufacturer.
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Remote Temperature Monitoring of Perishable Goods Saves Money
RMONI was facing temperature monitoring challenges in a cold chain business. A cold chain must be established and maintained to ensure goods have been properly refrigerated during every step of the process, making temperature monitoring a critical business function. Manual registration practice can be very costly, labor intensive and prone to mistakes.
Case Study
Cloud Solution for Energy Management Platform-Schneider Electric
Schneider Electric required a cloud solution for its energy management platform to manage high computational operations, which were essential for catering to client requirements. As the business involves storage and analysis of huge amounts of data, the company also needed a convenient and scalable storage solution to facilitate operations efficiently.
Case Study
Leveraging the IoT to Gain a Competitive Edge in International Competition
Many large manufacturers in and outside Japan are competing for larger market share in the same space, expecting a growing demand for projectors in the areas of entertainment, which requires glamor and strong visual performance as well as digital signage that can attract people’s attention. “It is becoming more and more difficult to differentiate ourselves with stand-alone hardware products,” says Kazuyuki Kitagawa, Director of Service & Support at Panasonic AVC Networks. “In order for Panasonic to grow market share and overall business, it is essential for us to develop solutions that deliver significant added value.” Panasonic believes projection failure and quality deterioration should never happen. This is what and has driven them to make their projectors IoT-enabled. More specifically, Panasonic has developed a system that collects data from projectors, visualizes detailed operational statuses, and predicts issues and address them before failure occurs. Their projectors are embedded with a variety of sensors that measure power supply, voltage, video input/ output signals, intake/exhaust air temperatures, cooling fan operations, and light bulb operating time. These sensors have been used to make the projector more intelligent, automatically suspending operation when the temperature rises excessively, and automatically switching light bulbs. Although this was a great first step, Panasonic projectors were still not equipped with any capability to send the data over a network.
