Nonetheless, the case for investing in safeguards has never been stronger. As traceability standards become ever more stringent, the amount of information that must be included on-pack is increasing all the time, from nutritional data to allergy warnings. The penalties for getting it wrong are severe, not just in terms of cost but also in brand reputation: an FSA Food Alert is a badge of dishonour.
Brands are diversifying as never before. A decade ago, a product range would consist of three or four variants, and more often than not each would be distinctly packaged to highlight its differentiation. Today, a range is likely to consist of ten or twenty different variants - usually defined by a specific nutritional aspect, be it low fat or reduced salt, or else a greater emphasis on the variety of produce or the country of origin to comply with traceability requirements.
At a time when the pressure to be accurate has never been greater, the scope for making errors has increased. With more products, there are more line changeovers and more variables to contend with - and with similar packaging it is easy for an operator to make a mistake.
Many companies' response to these possibilities is simply increased vigilance with the introduction of more checks during the packing operation. This does not, however, stop the wrong information being entered in the first place and does not tackle the problems and costs associated with reworking product or the resultant reduction in plant efficiency.
Nor are line checks infallible. Even the use of 'show-n-go' vision or barcode reading systems, where the operator trains the reader what a correct pack should look like, represents a challenge because it depends on the correct pack being selected in the first place. With the prevalence of strong family branding, it only takes a moment's inattention and the system has been taught to allow low fat ready meals to be placed in a reduced salt pack all day.
Put simply, for any systems that remain dependent on manual protocols, human error is inevitable, so surely the best method is a preventative one? It is here that a Packaging Coding Management System (PCMS) can prove invaluable, as the principle of PCMS is to remove the need for superfluous manual data input altogether. Once the correct data is confirmed within the production database, the PCMS will transmit it via a generic interface - compatible with leading makes and models of coding, labelling, barcoding and RF technology - to ensure consistency across all packaging.