How do you deal with foreign material contamination? Historically, there have been few options to deal with this brand hazard:
- Rework Product Internally
- Dispose of Contaminated Product
- Chance Sending Product to Market
The second and third options on this list—disposal or risking it—are wasteful and risk-laden options, respectively. More than that, they’re not anywhere close to the best options available. Formerly, internal rework was the “best” option at hand, but that’s not true anymore.
Cut to the here and now: the issue of foreign material contamination has changed, and FlexXray changed it. It’s time for rework to occupy the same place as disposal—a last resort.
Here are our main reasons why rework doesn’t make the grade:
Costs, Costs and Costs
No one likes getting “nickeled and dimed,” yet that’s exactly what happens when plants choose to rework product internally. If you have a foreign material contamination issue, do you shut down a production line so your staff can rework the product? Do you do the rework off hours, when you normally could be performing cleaning and sanitation procedures? These costs add up—particularly if your plant loses production time to rework. Stay tuned to our blog, as we’ll break this down in more detail in a future post. FlexXray’s bottom line is to help protect yours, and we price our inspection services accordingly.
What You Hired Them For
As with most things, there is no substitute for expertise. Your labor force is hired and trained to produce product, but ill-equipped and poorly trained to rework product internally. The core competency and technology is not there for your team to find foreign material contamination effectively, since that’s not what they’re trained to do. At FlexXray, our labor force is trained exclusively in using our systems to identify foreign material contamination of all types in product of all types. Foreign material inspection is what our labor force does, all day, every day.
Constrained Technology & Equipment
The equipment in your plant is designed to serve a specific purpose in your production line. While the equipment that can detect foreign material contamination is varied, the main technology available to detect foreign material in-plant are X-ray detectors and metal detectors. These tools, while useful at designed critical control points, can be extremely limited when used for rework. Metal detectors are only useful for finding metal, while X-ray detectors are typically calibrated to one specific type of foreign material. Few plants have such equipment separate from a production line, and finished product may not be capable of reentering such control points without labor-intensive de-packaging.
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It’s time to make rework a tool of the past. FlexXray’s X-ray inspection services provide better accuracy, better cost savings and better results for your brand. If you haven’t worked with us before, and would like to see how we operate, we’re happy to give you and your team a tour of our operations. If you want to put FlexXray to the test, we’d love to do a free sample test on your product to show you our capabilities. Contact us today.
