What do you really know about your best before date?

by Achim Andre on 20.12.2007

In the majority of cases the best before date (BBD) is the only indicator the customer or retailer has in order to determine the edibility of a product. Experience shows that the consumer will decide against a product if the BBD is missing or has not been correctly applied (e.g. due to a malfunction of the inkjet or laser coding system). The HEUFT vio OCR BBD code reading system ensures that such unnecessary faulty coding which also involves costs belongs to the past.

An example of faulty printing

The first time it was put into practice it produced amazing results:  it turned out that individual dots of the dot matrix repeatedly landed congruently with a lower dot and not at the intended position.  For example an eight became a six which in the most unfavourable case seemingly shortens how long a product keeps by two years!

A picture of the BBD code is taken after the coder with a CCD camera and verified using the given data.  A picture which is rich in contrast is achieved using integrated, multicoloured LEDs even when the object/background has different colours.  The data is processed by the HEUFT reflexx video processor an image processing system developed for high–speed pictures.  The BBD is checked to ensure that it is present, correctly printed and that its contents are accurate.  The target date is compared to the actual date by means of an automatic date adaptation in order to avoid operating errors when entering the current date.

The HEUFT vio OCR achieves a high detection accuracy even in the high speed range of 72,000 containers per hour by combining the most modern camera technology with high performance image processing.  You too can protect yourself against unnecessary costs!

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