Dave Bauer of Cognex

David Bauer, Mid-Atlantic DSM at Cognex Corporation, provided an informative and well structured and paced presentation at the May meeting. He started by summarizing the talk’s outline as consisting of three topics, each with three subtopics.

The first topic covered the three ways that unauthorized products can enter the marketplace:

• they can be diverted from the supply chain
• they can be counterfeit, and
• they can be damaged or cause damage.

Diverting a truckload of product to an unauthorized seller is an example of the first way. In the second case

Counterfeit circuit breaker

Bauer explained how a Chinese manufacturer copied Square D brand circuit breakers. The counterfeits offered little or no protection from electrical malfunctions. As an example of the third problem, diabetes injecte pens were stolen and sold to distributors at a discount. While not counterfeit, they did not receive proper refrigeration, and became ineffective and/or injurious.

The second topic outlined the three industries that must currently comply with regulation to ensure tracking of products: food & beverage, pharmaceuticals, and medical devices. Regulation becomes increasingly rigorous with several future deadlines to allow industries time to comply.

Lastly, Bauer covered technologies that help companies track their products as they move through the supply chain. For example, companies print serial numbers on each product item. They can generate random serial numbers linked to a database. Specialized security inks, coatings, tags are available for use in authenticating products. Additionally manufacturers can add tracking information to a bundle as well as a package of like products (aggregation), including a pallet of products. Tracking technologies include machine vision products for optical character recognition (OCR), 1D and 2D bar code readers, and radio frequency identification (RFID).