Automated Inspection and Coding of Cases on Produce Packaging Lines

In response to recent spinach and tomato/pepper recalls, the produce industry launched the Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) to institute electronic traceability standards. PTI created standards for marking produce cases which includes embedding a Global Trade Item Number (GTIN), lot/batch, and/or harvest date within a barcode. These new standards present challenges for adoption within the industry. Today, unsorted cases are processed on production lines within packing sheds and a common identification mark is applied to each case. With the new standard, each GTIN product will need a unique identification mark and due to the number of GTIN products, manpower resources, space availability, and time constraints, presorting cases before imprinting the traceability mark is impractical. For this SBIR, we propose to develop an automated case identification system capable of identifying and directly imprinting the necessary traceability information in-line with existing equipment. Specifically, we will develop flexible coding systems for unsorted GTIN products processed in packing sheds. The goal is to make it easier for industry to comply with the new standards by integrating into their existing production lines, improve reliability of the electronic mark, and minimize costs associated with implementing the new standards. We will investigate the feasibility of such a system in Phase I.