Laetus is a leading provider of solutions for inline vision quality control and complete Track-and-Trace systems worldwide. More than 18,000 installed systems globally during the past 45 years ensure the highest product quality and optimization of packaging processes for 3,500+ customers in industries such as pharmaceuticals, medical technology, cosmetics, food and FMCG.
Since 2015, Laetus has been part of the Danaher Group and, together with ALLTEC/FOBA, Esko, Linx, Pantone, Videojet and X-Rite, is part of the product identification platform within Danaher.
Easy Engineering: What are the company’s main areas of activity?
LAETUS: Companies that require packaging line efficiency and optimization reach out to us for implementing quality control, process optimization and product traceability solutions.
We have specialized expertise in three major areas:
Marking, Coding, and Quality Control on Packaging Lines
The ultimate goal of brand owners is to deliver the right product to the right place at the right time. The first part of the challenge is to ensure that the product leaving the production line is perfectly aligned with all specifications, including content, quality, packaging, etc. Quality control involves a complete assessment of products to ensure that they meet the required standards. Errors and defects are detected, handled accordingly and minimized as much as possible on the production lines.
After the marking process of the product, our software and camera inspect the codes that are printed by thermal, inkjet or laser printers, ensuring the availability, grade, and the correctness of the code. This process involves batch constant, data matrix, QR code, and all other commonly used printed codes. This Packaging Execution System detects the presence and correctness of the code, and thereby secures the manufacturing Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and a robust supply chain recall process.
* Marking, coding, and quality control for a wide range of products
Product Traceability, Serialization, and Aggregation
Tracking and traceability of goods from the manufacturer to the retailer and even to the end-consumer has become extremely important for all industries. The COVID-19 pandemic has changed consumer purchasing behaviors and many brand owners are rethinking the innovative marketing and sales tactics to adapt to those changes. Multiple technologies exist to ensure the traceability of goods, from batch constant tracking to serialization and aggregation.
Companies in the Consumer Packaged Goods industry are commercially required to apply mandatory batch constant coding to their products. In addition to mandatory coding, Brand Protection and Consumer Engagement activities become increasingly significant. To achieve those goals, brand owners use serialization and aggregation solutions for a digitized and connected package, communicating directly with consumers with a unique QR code on each individual product.
* Product Traceability, Serialization, and Aggregation
Packaging Line Process Optimization
Companies that have complex production environments request safe setup of several devices (cameras, printers, packaging line machines and devices) at a time. Processes required to setup devices on a line are started safe, predefined, and always the same regardless what operator executes which production line. Laetus software packages help to ensure, that cameras, printers, and devices are setup by a fingertip.
E.E: What is the range of products?
LAETUS: Implementing traceability and quality control projects requires change management and in-depth packaging line experience. All necessary competencies are available at Laetus: from project manager to validation manager and from mechanical engineer to system engineer. From software integration and retrofitting into existing machines, to delivery of completely new hardware, the planning is based on your deployment schedule to respect commitments and avoid downtime.
Our products and services contain 3 major categories:
Consultation & Project Management
- Packaging line efficiency consultation and OEE improvement
- Digital traceability project management and implementation
- Customer support, preventive maintenance, and training
Software
- Batch constant packaging execution system
- Serial code generation and data aggregation on packaging line; data carrier with ERP and MES systems
Hardware
- Camera for quality inspection of barcode, data matrix and QR code
- Printer for marking & coding
- Hardware for serialization and aggregation machines
E.E: What are the most innovative products marketed?
LAETUS:
In the current manufacturing environment, multiple production orders per day and line, short production cycles and large product variations make it challenging to improve equipment performance. In such complex production processes, a variety of different data exists to detect variances and improve efficiency.
The Laetus UP is a cross-application, uniform platform, which coordinates these vast quantities of data for production management and improves the complete data flow between existing systems and packaging line tools. The Laetus UP Suite supports production processes with a large selection of standardized modules following industrial requirements (GS1, EU traceability, IFS, BRC).
The software is strictly designed to be modular. All building blocks – hardware and software – are based on the same architecture and can be perfectly integrated and easily assembled on the UP platform. Solutions can be extended with further modules as soon as additional requirements arise or the demand changes. Add-on features cover aspects of production control, supply chain management, quality assurance, brand protection and customer engagement. Customers from the fields of pharmaceuticals, foods and baby foods, animal health, medical products, cosmetics, and chemicals benefit from this flexibility to build their solutions on the Laetus UP platform according to their unique requirements.
