Coding, Printing & Labeling: Page 203

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Playing catch-up

NFPA asked FDA for a 60-day extension, to September 3, 2004, for the comment period on rule making regarding nutrition content claims in food labeling.

August 31, 2004

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Trans fat labeling...continued

The Grocery Manufacturers of America and the National Food Processors Assn. offered their comments to the Food and Drug Administration on how trans fat information should be included on food labels.

August 31, 2004

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Survey: What's the value of RFID/EPC?

In April 2004, Accenture launched a survey of manufacturing executives across a range of companies—with the bulk coming from consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical companies—to determine how prevalent radio-frequency identification/electronic product code compliance mandates are today.

August 31, 2004

Blisters/clamshells/skin packaging

Package security demands linking of strategy, technology

Tactics such as DNA taggants and color-shifting inks have to be married with strategies that include tight supply-chain security.

August 31, 2004

Cartoning

Passing data horizontally from processing to packaging

Treating processing and packaging as disjointed tasks hurts efficiency and retards speed to market. New views of controls and integration could bring the two closer together.

August 31, 2004

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Drive Integration with Standards

As companies find many reasons to integrate data from process manufacturing and packaging with each other and with the rest of the company’s business applications, engineers are turning to standards and models from the Instrumentation, Systems and Automation Society (ISA), OMAC Packaging Workgroup and the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) for help.

August 31, 2004

Labeling

Pharma labels are triple-checked

Three smart cameras on a labeling system use sophisticated image-processing technology to ensure accuracy and readability of lot, date, and bar code.

August 31, 2004

Coding, Printing & Labeling

RFID tags becoming easier to read

On the other hand, return on investment for packagers will remain invisible for the near term. Now Wal-Mart softens stance on deadlines.

August 31, 2004

Coding, Printing & Labeling

RFID tags becoming easier to read

On the other hand, return on investment for packagers will remain invisible for the near term. Now Wal-Mart softens stance on deadlines.

August 31, 2004

Conveying & accumulation

Water bottled in Kuwait has U.S. flavor

A portable bottling line housed in a 20’x8’x81¼2’ container is quenching the thirst of troops and personnel in Kuwait City, Kuwait. Started up in fall 2003, the 25 bpm self-contained line provides 1.5-L bottled water on-demand for the Army & Air Force Exchange Service (AAFES) troops and support personnel, according to AAFES Food and Theatre program manager Tom Wilson.

July 31, 2004

Conveying & accumulation

Sites

New or enhanced Web sites

July 31, 2004

Coding, Printing & Labeling

Companies

Rockwell Automation opened a new radio-frequency identification (RFID) test lab at its global headquarters in Milwaukee. The lab is designed to help manufacturers facing production and inventory mandates from retailers understand how they can make RFID part of their distribution operations.

July 31, 2004