“Visual checks have limitations due to human factors. In some cases, printed errors in designs weren’t detected in earlier checks allowing them to slip through.”
Francisco Tomás López Ramírez, Packaging Lab Manager, at Hero Spain
How GlobalVision Helps Hero Group Eliminate Human Error in Their Quality Control Process
About Hero Group
Hero Group is an international consumer food manufacturing company whose core business focuses on baby food along with nutritional snack foods and spreads. Based in Switzerland, it was founded in 1886 in Lenzburg and has since grown into a worldwide enterprise. They currently have offices and production facilities spread across five continents including Europe, North America, the Middle East and Africa, and Turkey and Central Asia.
Their mission is to provide customers with high-quality, nutritious food while using only the best ingredients. Hero Group prides itself on products with fewer, more natural ingredients prepared with minimum processing.
Today, Hero Group employs 4,300 employees worldwide and in 2015, generated revenues surpassing CHF 1.26 billion.
The Challenge: Overcome the Limitations of Manual Checks on a Global Scale
As Hero Group deals primarily with baby and natural food products, their products fall under a heavily regulated umbrella that has to adhere to the highest standards.
Any errors that slip through in critical content files or artwork could lead to food recalls, financial losses, a decrease in brand loyalty, or in the worst-case scenario, consumer health risks. All these issues could be detrimental to the company and oftentimes difficult to reverse.
Francisco Tomás López Ramírez, Packaging Lab Manager at Hero Group’s Spain division, gave us in-depth insights into the issues their quality control teams were facing with regard to their revision processes. He noted that teams consistently noticed a gap in their inspections due to the many limitations of manual, visual checks.
Despite numerous rounds of manual proofreading, errors in text and graphics were slipping through due to human factors, which often lead to mistakes being overlooked. Manual and visual checks often failed to catch all differences in labeling and packaging, particularly when it came to graphic files where errors can be easily missed by the human eye. This emphasized the setbacks of relying solely on human checks to ensure accuracy.
Due to these limitations, quality control teams at Hero Spain quickly realized that there was a necessity to automate the proofing of their printed designs and graphics.
The Solution: Eliminate Human Error Through Automated Quality Control
After several years of looking for an automated inspection system, in 2021, Hero Spain decided to test GlobalVision’s inspection technology. The results of the inspections showed that it was very much possible to automatically proofread and inspect files with few false positives and in record time.
Since then, Hero Spain was quick to implement GlobalVision into their everyday quality control processes and use the software as an added quality control measure for their graphic files. In their day-to-day operations, it is used to look over design changes to ensure final graphics are completely error-free. At the moment, the Packaging Lab is the primary department using GlobalVision for its inspections.
Throughout the years, Hero Spain observed numerous advantages of using GlobalVision’s file comparison technology but has particularly noted three main benefits of the software:
- Automated inspections of printed graphics that prevent human errors from slipping through
- Fully automated inspections of artwork files in foreign languages (Chinese, Swedish, etc.)
- Innovative and modern solutions to their quality control processes
When asked if he was satisfied with the system, training, support, and ease of use of GlobalVision’s software, Mr. López said that he was “highly satisfied” and that he has “already recommended the system to our quality colleagues in Hero Group.” The main benefit he boasts about is that it is a feasible system to control artwork files and avoid human errors and factors.
They expect to increase that number in the coming years to continue to better their offer of only the most premium products.
He also went on to add that not only have internal teams noticed the benefits of implementing GlobalVision but clients have also been impacted. Clients have taken note of the added efforts taken by Hero Spain to ensure the high quality of their products.
When asked what they would do if GlobalVision were to hypothetically no longer be available, Mr. López said they would be at a loss as they simply cannot imagine going back to manual, visual checks in their quality control processes.
“I’m extremely satisfied with GlobalVision. I’ve already recommended the system to our quality colleagues in Hero Group!”
Francisco Tomás López Ramírez, Packaging Lab Manager, at Hero Spain
