As we celebrate 50 years since the introduction of the first barcode, the world of product identification is evolving. Enter two-dimensional (2D) barcodes—a game-changer that goes beyond the familiar “beep” at the checkout.
Industries across the globe are preparing to transition from traditional one-dimensional (1D) barcodes, like the EAN/UPC, to more advanced two-dimensional (2D) barcodes. Unlike their 1D predecessors, 2D barcodes can store significantly more data, providing a wealth of information at the scan of a code. This evolution is set to commence in 2027, a global initiative to transition to 2D barcodes for point-of-sale (POS) and point-of-care (POC) applications. This transition is not just a technological upgrade; it’s a monumental change that promises to enhance data accessibility, transparency, and efficiency across various sectors.
These new 2D barcodes will be used in manufacturing, warehousing, logistics and healthcare. They connect businesspeople to the information they need for inventory management, traceability programmes, sustainability initiatives, consumer engagement actions and more. While One-dimensional barcodes will not completely disappear, 1D, QR and DataMatrix codes will coexist in retail.The EAN/UPC barcode has been the cornerstone of product identification and price lookup for decades. However, as consumer demands and regulatory requirements evolve, the limitations of these 1D barcodes have become increasingly apparent. Today’s stakeholders (brand owners, regulators, distributors, retailers, or consumers) require more comprehensive product information delivered seamlessly and securely. Brand owners can tap even more fully into their power and flexibility by encoding them with a GS1 Digital Link; in the same way, a URL points to a website, a GS1 Digital Link enables connections to all types of business-to-business and business-to-consumer information.2D barcodes offer a myriad of advantages that address the pressing needs of today’s supply chains and consumer markets:
The shift to 2D barcodes represents a significant step forward in meeting the demands of modern supply chains and consumer expectations. For businesses, this means updating POS systems and ensuring their QR code implementations are secure and trustworthy.
Using laser technology to code and mark your products with 2D codes means lower operating costs than inkjet technology; as there are no consumables, businesses can confidently embrace the future of barcoding, ensuring that they are ready for the increased data demands and security challenges that come with it.
As we move toward 2027, let’s work together to build a safer, more transparent, and efficient digital world. With our expertise, your transition to 2D barcodes will be seamless, empowering you to meet the evolving needs of your customers and stakeholders.
This technology allows businesses across various sectors to imprint lasting markings on their products with unparalleled precision, but it also comes with its share of risks. These include potential eye and skin injuries, fire hazards, and air contaminants.
While laser engraving is a non-contact process and generally safe, robust safety measures must be implemented to mitigate these risks.
Here are some safety guidelines we recommend for a secure and efficient operation:Safety Glasses: Always equip yourself with safety glasses specifically designed to filter out the laser’s wavelengths. These glasses are your first line of defence against potential harm from laser radiation. We suggest using filter-type safety goggles with high optical density.Protective Clothing and Gloves: Donning protective gear like lab coats, head covers, and face shields can protect your skin from accidental laser beam exposure. Gloves are essential to safeguard operators’ hands from burns, electrical shocks, and other injuries.Protective Enclosures: Incorporate standard Class 1 protective enclosures around your laser engraving machines. These enclosures protect bystanders from laser exposure and shield your workspace from fumes and smoke.Comprehensive Training: Ensure all personnel working with high-powered lasers undergo thorough training on laser safety protocols and operational procedures. Proper training is key to minimizing the risk of accidents.For more insights on prioritizing laser safety, read here.
Traceability is becoming increasingly important in manufacturing for businesses in various industries. It is relevant to products like food, vehicles, or aircraft that might be subject to recall and should be integrated into all manufacturing processes.
Traceability is crucial as it allows us to track products throughout the supply chain. By tracking every aspect of production and distribution, we can help prevent issues such as counterfeiting, ensure quality control, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Many manufacturing businesses use identifiable marks on product parts for authentication and easy tracking. Failing to mark these parts during production leads to numerous problems. Our equipment, including dot-peen and laser marking systems, helps maintain permanent product marks.
Implementing traceability in the manufacturing process provides several benefits:Ensuring Product Safety: Traceability is the frontline defence against counterfeit products. Manufacturers can build safer, higher-quality products by tracking materials, parts, and finished goods throughout production and the supply chain.Meeting Regulatory Standards: Traceability ensures compliance with diverse regulatory landscapes in global markets. This minimizes risks and guarantees consistent quality.Boosting Consumer Confidence: Transparent traceability fosters trust. When consumers know about a product’s origin, manufacturing process, and adherence to safety standards, they feel more confident in their purchase decisions.Enhancing Operational Efficiency: Real-time production traceability allows companies to monitor the entire production process, not just the finished products. Insights into each workstation’s time spent, inspection notes, and schedules lead to operational improvements.Risk Management: Traceability mitigates risks associated with product recalls and defects. Manufacturers can quickly identify affected batches and take corrective actions when issues arise.Supply Chain Transparency: Traceability provides a comprehensive paper trail, documenting the origin, production, and delivery of goods. This enhances transparency within the supply chain, benefiting both manufacturers and consumers.Competitive Advantage: Companies that embrace traceability gain a competitive edge. It demonstrates a commitment to quality, safety, and compliance, which is attractive to customers and partners.Modern manufacturing tracking systems employ advanced technologies like barcodes, RFID, and data analytics to maintain stringent quality control standards. So, whether you produce widgets or high-tech gadgets, traceability matters!
To learn more about the importance of Traceability in Manufacturing, you can read the blog post here.
Fabricators and galvanizers can print this tag, attach it to their steel, and read the barcode on the tag after galvanization. The days of using laminators and cutting tags apart are over, making the identification process more efficient for our customers. This streamlines your production by saving you time, money, and resources.
For Galvanizers and Fabricators:
The only tag that survives all 9 steps for galvanizing listed by the American Galvanizers Association.
Our state-of-the-art machines are the cornerstone of traceability, marking unique identifiers on each component for unparalleled quality control and operational excellence.
Embrace the power of meticulous root cause analysis, streamline product recall processes, and enhance customer satisfaction.
Safeguard your brand against counterfeits and ensure every part’s journey is tracked with flawless accuracy.
Contact our sales team to learn more about our laser marking machines at sales@tracesol.co.za
Over the next series of blog posts, we’ll be delving into how our vision and inspection solutions can help prevent some of the Automotive Industry recalls that were experienced last year, equipping you with solutions to prevent recalls in the future.Airbags, our crucial guardians in a crash, shouldn’t become the source of our worries. Yet, recalls on defective airbag systems continue to plague the automotive industry, costing lives and eroding consumer trust. But what if we could catch these issues before they reach the road? Enter safety system final assembly verification with advanced vision systems – a game-changer in preventing airbag recalls.
Final assembly verification with advanced vision systems acts as a final safety net, ensuring airbag systems are flawless before vehicles roll off the line. Here’s how:
Airbag Canister Inspection: Inflating airbags requires gas generators, which are essential to the operation of car safety systems. All parts must be present and in the right positions for the gas generator to operate properly. The lack of positional accuracy provided by human inspection makes it challenging to achieve strict specification standards. Manufacturers of assemblies and parts that arecritical to safety can check for the presence of parts and automatically confirm their location with our vision systems. In order to determine a pass-or-fail result based on standard standards, vision tools locate the position of the airbag canister in the field of view and adjust to changes in lighting produced by the parts’ curved reflective surface.Airbag Fabric Inspection: Strict quality requirements are applied to airbags in order to guarantee passenger safety. All safety-critical parts must be checked twice and three times by automakers in order to assure quality, lower warranty costs, and lower recall liability. This is particularly crucial for airbags, which need to be checked for defects in the seams and stitching, as well as holes, rips, and tears that could lead to airbag failure. In manual inspection, these kinds of quality problems are frequently overlooked or difficult to find.The intricate textile surface of an airbag makes them challenging to program into a conventional machine vision system. Because of the fabric’s stretchability, yarn thickness, and innumerable tiny acceptable changes, the pattern of the fabric can be extremely intricate, and the way airbags look varies greatly.Airbag Component Inspection: Strict quality requirements are applied to airbags in order to guarantee passenger safety. Quality control is crucial for airbags because even a small production flaw can affect how well the cushion performs, particularly when it comes to the textiles and seams. The final product is influenced by the fabric and seams, so it’s important to check them for flaws like uneven or long stitches and other structural problems. In manual inspection, these kinds of quality problems are frequently overlooked or difficult to find. From the yarns used in weaving until the final sewing operation, meticulous testing and quality control are required. With the help of our vision systems, manufacturers may achieve higher accuracy than with manual inspection by automating the airbag stitching inspection process. Through precise stitch length measurement and other methods, the vision system confirms that airbags adhere to standards.
By integrating final assembly verification with advanced vision systems, manufacturers can achieve:
The automotive industry is rapidly transforming, and embracing advanced vision systems is no longer optional. The South African automotive industry is poised for growth, but quality control remains crucial. By embracing advanced vision and inspection systems, South African OEMs can:
Investing in smarter vision systems today is an investment in the future of the automotive industry, one where quality, safety, and innovation reign supreme.
Let’s work together to make recalls a thing of the past.
The year 2023 brought both progress and setbacks for the automotive industry. While electric vehicles continued their rise and autonomous driving technology advanced, a worrying trend emerged: a spike in car recalls. Over the last few years, several leading car brands have announced local or global recalls for safety-critical aspects such as airbags, brakes, steering wheels, emissions and more. Millions of vehicles were pulled off the road last year due to safety and performance issues, leading to inconvenience for drivers, financial losses for manufacturers, and reputational damage.
The South African automotive industry also saw its fair share of recalls in 2023, impacting thousands of vehicles and raising concerns about safety and quality control. While the global trend shows a decrease in recall events, South Africa experienced an increase in affected units, highlighting the need for proactive solutions.
But what if some of these recalls could have been prevented? Here’s where advanced vision and inspection systems come into play.Numbers: Despite a decrease in recall events globally (916 vs. 955 in 2022), the number of units affected increased by 23% (38.43 million), highlighting the severity of the issues. While official data for 2023 is still limited for SA, reports suggest several major recalls impacting popular car brands.Cost: The financial impact is significant, with estimates suggesting recalls cost automakers billions of dollars annually.Impact: These recalls affected thousands of vehicles, causing inconvenience and safety concerns for South African drivers.Causes: Like global trends, electrical system issues topped the list in South Africa, followed by concerns with powertrain, fuel systems, and airbags.
Local Expertise & Support: We understand the unique challenges of the South African automotive landscape and offer tailored solutions with local support.Improved Quality Control: We offer a range of inspection solutions, from 3D scanning for body weld integrity to automated visual inspection for component quality. These systems ensure consistent quality throughout the manufacturing process, minimising the risk of recalls.Data-Driven Decisions: Manufacturers gain valuable insights into production trends and potential failure points by collecting and analysing inspection data. This data helps predict and prevent future problems, leading to proactive quality control strategies.Compliance & Efficiency: Our systems adhere to South African safety regulations and contribute to efficient production processes, boosting overall quality and competitiveness.
Automotive parts require permanent marking for quality control and traceability, which means you need a durable mark that can hold up against constant wear.
Every automotive company understands the importance of safety. However, some professionals may be unaware of how large a role automotive laser marking plays in ensuring this safety.
Laser marking machines help maintain part traceability in the automotive industry, promoting greater quality, efficiency and customer satisfaction.
Various parts, from car batteries to engine parts, can be marked!
Read more about laser marking automotive parts hereHistorically, lighting was often the last aspect specified, developed, and or funded, if at all. And this approach was not entirely unwarranted, as until
recently there was no real, vision-specific lighting on the market; lighting devices were often consumer-level incandescent or fluorescent lighting products.
Perhaps no other aspect of vision system design and implementation has consistently caused more delay, cost overruns, and general consternation than lighting.
Cognex offers a Lighting Advisor tool, this unique tool allows you to explore the effects of different lighting techniques and lighting positions on a range of typical items.
The automotive industry demands precision pattern-matching and alignment solutions for automotive metal stamped components including frame pieces, safety equipment, motors, and engines.
Automation systems rely on machine vision to calculate accurate coordinates, which robots use to pick and align sheet metal blanks with tool and die surfaces.
Automated precision stamping occurs under strict tolerances and spans a broad range of part types, materials, and specifications.
Industry-leading machine vision technology calculates the coordinates and rotational offsets of multiple blanks travelling on a conveyor simultaneously so that a robot can accurately place it into a staging machine or directly into a metal stamping machine.
This allows manufacturers to work with different patterns and edge finishes and pick up parts at a repeatable offset during high-speed production runs.
Contact our sales team to find out more about the machine vision solutions we have available, sales@tracesol.co.za.Historically, lighting was often the last aspect specified, developed, and or funded, if at all. And this approach was not entirely unwarranted, as until
recently there was no real, vision-specific lighting on the market; lighting devices were often consumer-level incandescent or fluorescent lighting products.
Perhaps no other aspect of vision system design and implementation has consistently caused more delay, cost overruns, and general consternation than lighting.
Cognex offers a Lighting Advisor tool, this unique tool allows you to explore the effects of different lighting techniques and lighting positions on a range of typical items.
Market leaders and experts in marking, identification, traceability, automation and authentication systems & solutions. Visit the Mitas website
Unit 54
Design Boulevard
Northlands Deco Park
New Market Road
Northriding
Johannesburg
2169
+27 10 020 7220
