Contract Manufacturer Avoids Increased Costs & Labor Costs With Tablet Vision Inspection System

A contract manufacturer was producing a coated, controlled release tablet for initial product launch, but encountered problems with the printing of product information on each tablet. Their customer was very particular about both the appearance of each tablet and the clarity of information that was to be visible on each tablet. If the tablets could not pass a rigid inspection, batches of the product would be rejected, at cost to the manufacturer of $150,000 per batch, until a satisfactory appearance could be achieved. The manufacturer would have to either re-inspect the batches to meet their customer’s stringent requirements, or face remanufacturing entire batches.

Not only were these products new to the market, the high-speed printing process had not been used before and the print quality on the coating of the tablet was inconsistent. The first batches of the new product were inspected manually, which proved to be slow, expensive and relatively inaccurate, as the first batches were returne by the customer because they did not meet specifications.

To solve this problem, the manufacturer turned to an electronic visual inspection system using a Viswill TVIS-EX-CD. The returned batches were then reinspected and returned to the customer, who accepted the product as being within specification. Subsequent batches that were inspected electronically all met customer requirements and the product launch moved ahead without incident.