The average cost of a product recall in specific industries is in millions when we measure the overall time, efforts, and costs of recovering the recalled products. Additionally, these expenses are even more costly when we consider the final consequences of product recalls. A lost market share, the effect on customer loyalty and several other concerns must be thoroughly counted to evaluate a recall’s impact on your company brand.

Despite the underlying problems that are sources to product recalls, there is no particular reason why recalls should be as regular as they are today with advanced infrastructure and the latest technologies. Organizations should take the assistance of right vision inspection solutions that are highly competent in finding and reporting problems before these products finally leave the plant. In this particular blog, we will discuss and explore the significant impact product recalls can have on a company brand and suggest solutions to keep away from future product recalls.

Harmful Impacts of Product Recalls

• Involved Costs

Let’s initiate with costs. The cost of a product recall is not equivalent to the cost of the exhausted product alone. It also comprises the costs of precisely finding, transporting, and demolishing that particular product, plus the expenses linked to your supply chain’s distraction. All these cost factors incorporate business interruption, reverse logistics, alerts to relevant parties (customers, supply chain, regulatory bodies, and consumers) along with added labor costs to perform all these tasks which have not been included in the budget by the involved stakeholders.

• Customer Loyalty

When customers lose reliance on a company brand, it eventually translates to losses in sales and reduction in market share, mainly if the product recall is because of undeclared ingredients and allergens. In a recent report by the food industry, around 55 percent of consumers said they would provisionally or temporarily switch brands due to a product recall. Furthermore, about 15 percent said they would by no means buy the recalled product for a second time, and around 21 percent would shun buying any product from that specific brand.

Further, even if you don’t face a product recall, unsatisfactory experience with your product because of factors like mislabelling or miscoded products will impact the brand and hurt its probability of becoming a successful product with momentous sales.

Frequent Causes for Product Recalls

Despite the efforts, time, and expense connected with correcting these problems, recalls are not at all rare. According to surveys and reports, there have been a high number of recalls each month due to labelling mistakes alone so far in the year 2020. The frequent issues for recalls comprise:

• Undeclared Allergen Information: Whether allergen information is scribbled or expelled from the packaging.
• Mismatched Product and Packaging: Packaging is executed with the incorrect product version by error and has to be recalled.
• Mislabelled Lids and Packaging: The lids or labels are made functional to the mistaken packaging, which outcomes in the form of a recall.

Enhancing traceability for swifter identification and reporting of these problems can assist you in evading expensive product recalls and trim down products as well as plastic wastes.

How to Avoid Product Recalls

Finally, coming to the solution of this problem, Shubham Automation, with a decade of experience designing Vision Inspection Systems has developed and enabled an automated vision inspection solution called PCC ACCURA.

PCC ACCURA is compact and state-of-the-art designed product which can be easily integrated with any of your packing line machines. It is integrated with multiple advanced cameras and numerous lines right through our smart eye software. It uses 15.6 inch industrial PC with a touch display for simplicity of operation as well as view.

Further, it utilizes modernized tools and advance illumination for precise reading on shiny surfaces. It acts like an intelligent eye checking solution for comprehensively checking-out the final packaging information on products to uphold information correctness rather than depending on human resources to execute this job manually. 

The solution advances and boosts line accuracy as well as quality assurance. It avoids recalls, trims down the overall downtime, false-rejects, and declines any type of rework, thereby continuously increasing production line efficiency.

PCC ACCURA facilitates several specific categories of automated inspections. Here are a few we have included: 

• Enable checking of all types of cartons, bottles, pouch, containers, carboys, barrels, and bulk bags for finding errors.
• Printed batch code and expire code is examined to confirm whether it is completely precise or not.
• The solution can ensure the cap fitting, cap pop-up, label presence, and complete alignment.
• It can also identify a mix match of labels and products in the explicit shipper.
• Finally, it facilitates reports such as precise performance reports, audit trail reports, batch-wise reports, hourly reports, production reports, and specific fail image analysis. 

Moving Forward

At Shubham Automation, our range of quality assurance solutions like PCC ACCURA facilitates organizations like you to prevent recalls for your brand that deliver nothing but the best experience to the client, the involved supply chain stakeholders, and the end consumer. 

Our dynamic quality assurance team is always our client’s default Quality Assurance Heads with complete responsibilities in any of the sectors or domains we provide our automated solutions.