Diagraph's Blog

Is training production line workers creating a challenge? No problem!

Companies rely on engineers or technicians to keep production lines up and running. These job functions are essential to hitting production targets, so it is key that their skill level on equipment is proficient. When making the decision to replace this equipment, the amount of time and money that will have to be invested in training your labor is a major deciding factor.

How do I get labels to stick in hot and humid environments?

Something to be aware of when considering using labeling for product identification in a hot or humid environment is that labels are sensitive to temperature, making facility environment temperature a determining factor in choosing what label material to use on a product.

Tagged With: compliance, label applicator, labeling, packaging

How to Overcome Manufacturing Challenges During a Crisis

During the COVID-19 pandemic, manufacturers in essential industries such as food, hygiene products, and medical supplies are needed more than ever. It’s critical that these products continue to be produced and shipped in a timely manner, to support the growing demand. Current manufacturers are doing the best they can to keep their production up at this time. And moreover, companies in industries from cosmetics to breweries to sustainable clothing are pivoting in the face of the COVID-19 disaster.

How can IIoT and centralized printer management software improve your operation?

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is transforming manufacturing and a whole host of other industries. IIoT connects industrial devices that can monitor, collect, exchange, and analyze data, and leverage that data and connectivity to help you make smarter, faster and more effective business decisions.

Tagged With: connectivity, IIoT, material handling

Why Automated Material Handling and Data Management Are Vital to Achieving Packaging Compliance

To achieve packaging compliance, manufacturers need more than picking the right product coding technology. Data management and packaging control and automation add another level of sophistication to an operation’s compliance practices.

How to Pick the Best Product Identification Solution

Step one of a manufacturer’s game plan for packaging compliance is to understand your manufacturing code and print application requirements, in order to pick the product identification solution that is best for your needs.

4 Key Considerations To Achieve Packaging Compliance

The importance of packaging compliance in the supply chain cannot be overlooked. Consumer packaged goods need to meet packaging compliance to adhere to global and government regulations and retailer standards for product safety. When manufacturers fail packaging compliance, they can be subject to significant penalties and fines, suffer loss of customers and reputation, suffer supply chain inefficiencies, and more.

Score Savings with Diagraph at PACK EXPO Las Vegas in Booth C-4000

Every year the biggest show in packaging and processing raises the bar for innovation and consumer trends. Whether you're looking for a solution to production challenges or you're attending to absorb new industry information, experts from across the industry exhibit at PACK EXPO to share their latest and greatest products and services. This fall, PACK EXPO kicks off in Las Vegas on September 23rd through the 25th.

Demand for Flexible Packaging Expected to Grow

The US food industry is the leader for flexible packaging with the market continuing to grow with an expected 3.9% CAGR and valuation of $392 billion by 2023. Flexible packaging currently accounts for 19% of the packaging market – second only to corrugated paper. Advancements in slider closures, fitments, and improved barrier properties are driving preferences amongst both manufacturers and consumers.

Tagged With: beverage, flexible packaging, food, innovation

Your Guide To Automating Your Pallet Labeling Process

The final step in your production process can often be overlooked. After rigorously completing all the upstream processing, packaging and coding processes, the final palletized product seems to be a small step before crossing the finish line. Labeling at the pallet level is, however, a crucial process for identifying palletized shrink-wrapped products being shipped to retailers.

Buying Versus Leasing Product Identification Equipment

Capital expenses can be tough to get approved and can hold up much needed upgrades at the plant level. In fact – old, faulty, and inadequate equipment can cause costly disruptions to production, impacting the bottom line more significantly than the cost to upgrade. For manufacturers without the available capital to invest in purchasing new equipment, leasing can be a great option.

Top Considerations When Selecting Coding Equipment In The Dairy Industry

Products containing animal milk are on a constant time clock. Cows must be milked every day, meaning it is possible for dairy operations to be running 24/7 to get products with an under 20-day expiration period out the door and onto shelves. In these fast-paced manufacturing environments for fluid milk, cheese, yogurt, butter and ice cream products, there are several factors that impact the method and features required for achieving legible marks and labels onto packaging.

Top Recommended Inks for Inkjet Coding in the Dairy Industry

No one wants to risk their health or the health of their family by bringing home dairy products with indistinguishable expiration dates. Regardless if your dairy plant produces fluid milk, cheese, yogurt or ice cream, if your product does not have a legible expiration date on it chances are your product will remain on grocer’s shelves.

Marking 125 Years in Business with Special Customer Savings at PACK EXPO International

2018 marks Diagraph’s 125th anniversary in business and we’re inviting the industry to celebrate this momentous occasion with us at PACK EXPO International in Chicago. Diagraph is exhibiting at booth N-5721 with our full line-up of product solutions including small character inkjet, high-resolution inkjet case coders, all-electric labelers and thermal transfer overprinters. Come visit us and discover our new initiatives designed to make product identification easy for our customers

What is the Diagraph Uptime Advantage?

As a key component in our Diagraph Solution Center model, the Diagraph Uptime Advantage focuses on delivering more uptime through our products with minimal intervention requirements. We believe that our coding and labeling solutions should be the least of your worries. This is why our equipment solutions are built to withstand the toughest of manufacturing environments and consistently produce high quality marks – print after print after print.

Inside Diagraph’s Solution Matching Services

To help our customers combat this growing issue, we are introducing what we call Diagraph Solution Matching Services. We will partner with you to conduct a complete site audit at your facility or, for larger customers, your family of facilities to pinpoint opportunities where slight changes in coding operations can provide valuable benefits.

Introducing the Diagraph Solution Center

In the process of celebrating our past, we couldn’t help but look to the future. How are we going to write the next chapter in our 125-year-old story? This is a question that we asked ourselves leading up to this important anniversary. One thing we know for sure is that this chapter is not being written without the direct involvement of our customers as we have turned to them to help us chart a new course.

Tagged With: Business News, Innovation

Delivering Innovation at Diagraph for 125 Years – and Counting

Let’s set the scene: The year is 1893. Pepsi is introduced to the world for the first time as “Brad’s Drink” in New Bern, North Carolina. The zipper – referred to as a “clasp locker” – makes its debut at the Chicago World’s Fair. Inspired by views from Pikes Peak in Colorado, Katharine Lee Bates writes “America the Beautiful”. And on the banks of the Mississippi River along the St. Louis Levee, cargo piles up as it’s awaiting hand addressing…

Keep Up With Snack Packaging Trends With Smarter CIJ Technology

No longer is it the case that snacks are packaged specifically for children’s lunch boxes. Today, the snack market is heavily geared towards adults with 94% of adults snacking at least once a day and 50% snacking 2 to 3 times a day.* Snack producers are tasked with changing traditional packaging to address a different kind of consumer.

Are You Ready to Automate Date Coding on Your Ready-to-Eat Products?

Fast-paced lifestyles of the working class and a growing number of Millennials demanding on-the-go options are two contributing factors to the rise in the ready-to-eat (RTE) prepared foods market with a projected CAGR of 7.2% between 2016-2026 With the versatility of the packaging substrates and forms for RTE products, we are outlining some key considerations to keep in mind for date coding to still achieve demanding throughput goals.

How to create durable ISPM 15 compliance marks on wooden pallets

Shipping products using wood packaging and dunnage between countries is a process regulated by the International Plant Protection Convention (IPPC). Wooden materials like pallets and crates can potentially carry diseases or insects from one country into another where an infestation would negatively impact the ecosystem. Composed of 175 member countries, the IPPC has established requirements around the treatment of wood packaging leaving and entering their countries to prevent infestations that could be harmful to their local plant life.

Benefits of automated coding in the meat, poultry and seafood packing industries

According to a recent PMMI Business Intelligence Report, the meat, seafood, and poultry packing industries are experiencing “a global boom” due to several factors including import and export opportunities expanding into new markets, growth in foodservice, and growth in ready meals. Food producers are rapidly moving to automate processing and packaging to be prepared to meet increased demand and be flexible enough to adapt to changing product coding requirements.

Understanding High Resolution Inks for Your Industrial Inkjet Printer

Selecting ink for your inkjet technology – impulse jet, valve jet or thermal jet – requires an understanding of your application and some basic qualities of the inks available. We asked our inkjet experts for key information to help shine some light on understanding the ink options available in the market.

The Top Choice for Date, Lot and Batch Coding

Diagraph’s customers have spoken and they prefer the Linx 8900 continuous inkjet printer for their date, lot and batch doing needs! Customer feedback cited several reasons that the Linx 8900 model is their top choice.

Using Product Coding and Labeling to Manage a Growing Number of SKUs

A number of factors contribute to the drastic rise in SKUs, like company acquisitions and portfolio merging, flavor variety, count variety and retailer-specific case sizes, to name a few. Managing an increasing number of SKUs is costly for snack food manufacturers, especially when a bulk of them only contribute a small portion to their bottom-line profit.

What is Retail Ready Packaging?

Retail-ready packaging, warehouse with cases and pallets, product identification

Retail ready packaging (RRP) is increasing in popularity among big box retailers. A retail-ready package refers to secondary packaging that is branded appropriately to be able to move to retail shelves in a quick, “one touch” movement.

What Makes a Good Spare Industrial Inkjet Printer?

Downtime in your production simply isn’t an option. But at any moment, an unpredictable event can arise like low ink levels, maintenance and clogging, putting your operations on hold anywhere from an hour to an entire shift. So how do you prepare for the unexpected? One option that we see put into practice by many customers is the investment in a spare inkjet printer – a reliable, on-hand system that can quickly be fired up on a production line when your regular systems suddenly quit.

Enhance the Food Safety Process with Functional Inks

Continuous inkjet (CIJ) is the technology of choice for food packaging coding as the solvent based inks adhere to a variety of materials like cartons, plastics, films, foils, metal and glass. CIJ is ideal for food packaging in that it offers high speed, non-contact small character printing and enables food processors to incorporate inkjet codes into their functional safety and traceability processes.

Questions to Ask When Evaluating CIJ Versus Laser Coding for Your Food Production Line

Two common automated marking and coding solutions for food packaging are continuous inkjet and laser coding. Which solution best fits your application is dependent on a number of factors.

Achieve Less Downtime in Food and Bottling Lines When You Choose These Durable CIJ Features

All food and beverage manufacturers have a commitment to efficient operations and strive to increase output with maximum uptime. Many of these manufacturers require variable information such as lot or batch codes, expiration dates, or barcodes on their product and make use of Continuous Inkjet (CIJ) to achieve these required codes.

How Traversing CIJ and TTO Technology Solutions are Impacting Your Bottom Line

If you’re a manufacturer integrating traversing CIJ and thermal transfer overprinters in your form, fill and seal machines, consumables contribute to your total cost of ownership in a major way.

NEW MODELS EXTEND LASER CODING CAPABILITIES

Linx Printing Technologies is launching two laser coders that will open up the benefits of laser technology to more companies and applications. Key benefits of the new Linx CSL range are even faster printing speeds and greater versatility, making the coders ideal for a wider variety of products. Quicker and easier installation and set-up help to make laser coding simpler and more accessible.

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Small Character Inkjet Features That Shine in the Meat Packing Industry

The meat packaging industry has coding and traceability requirements similar to other food industries, yet the cold and humid environments indicative of the industry can pose additional challenges for packaging equipment not experienced in more temperate facilities.

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Look for these 4 CIJ Features When Facing Skilled Labor Challenges

Ease of serviceability was a common pain point expressed by customers at this year’s PMMI Annual Conference “The Customer Speaks — OpX Leadership Network Panel”. Manufacturers are experiencing frequent turnover, making it difficult to keep a staff knowledgeable, up-to-date and skilled on their equipment.

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Choosing Stick Pack or Sachet Equipment to Integrate with Your Multi-Lane Printer

Once your packet is coded, sachet or stick pack packaging requires a specialized system to form the packaging receptacle, fill the product into the packet, and seal the ends to secure the product for transport. These systems are known as FFS - form, fill, and seal machines - and they come in two different varieties: (1) Vertical (VFFS) and (2) Horizontal (HFFS).

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Improved Linx Printhead Offers Advantages Over Competition

The latest Continuous Inkjet Printer from Linx Printing Technologies, the 8900 Series, reflects the fundamental Linx design philosophies of Ease of Use and Reliability and is supported by the MK11 hermetically sealed printhead that protects all critical components during operation and cleaning.

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Diagraph's Blog

Diagraphs Blog covers the latest in coding and labeling products