Shree Sales counts on Pratham for carton inspection

Supersort is an offline carton inspection and sorting system for pharma folding cartons developed by Pune-based folding equipment specialist Pratham Technologies in collaboration with Germany-based Vision Experts.

 

SSPL general manager Rajvi Parekh said manual sorting is a bottleneck, wastes too much time and diminishes productivity to a great extent and so she looked for a machine that could take care of carton inspection.

 

She added that she faced issues during manual sorting of Braille cartons as it is not feasible to check every embossed part of Braille manually.

 

“When you are catering to pharmaceutical companies, you need to be absolutely sure about your product. There is zero margin for error. With this investment we have gone a step ahead to reduce manual touchpoints in our production flow,” she said. 

 

The machine is equipped with three cameras and a fluorescent illumination system and delivers at a speed of 200m/min, meaning 50,000 cartons per hour for smaller cartons and 20,000 cartons per hour for larger cartons. According to Parekh, Supersort takes approximately 15-20 minutes to set up a new job and less than 10 minutes for a repeat job.

 

Talking about the reliability of the system, she said, “In an inspection system, the critical part is to decide on the cartons which are at the borderline of set defective parameters. As a user, you need to understand what your needs are in terms of acceptable quality and make the settings accordingly. The machine then makes pixel to pixel matching and is thus capable of correctly identifying those borderline defects and handling them accurately.”

 

When asked if there is anything that she wished the machine had that it doesn’t, Parekh said that if Pratham is able to incorporate a Braille roller between the feeder and the inspection zone, then the wastage can be reduced further.

 

With the new investment, the company now fulfils the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) requirement and has thus been able to add new pharma clients.

 

Established in 1998 by founder Mukund Parekh, SSPL today has an install base of eight Heidelberg presses, a mix of single colour, two-colour, five- and six-colour machines at its 35,000 sq/ft unit, which employs 200 people.