PETpla.net Insider 10 / 2019

INSPECTION 40 PET planet Insider Vol. 20 No. 10/19 www.petpla.net Company jubilee at Heuft Systemtechnick Striving forwards for 40 years What began more than 40 years ago has since developed into a global manufacturer of innovative control, inspection, rejection and labelling systems for continuous inline quality assurance in the filling and packaging of beverages, food- stuffs and pharmaceuticals: Heuft Systemtechnik GmbH was founded on April 1 st in 1979. On this occasion, Heuft invited its customers, friends and politicians to take a look into the future and to review the successful history of the company. With just twelve confidants, Bern- hard Heuft started operations in Burg- brohl in the Volcanic Eifel, Germany. The fact that the strength of his highly motivated team has increased a hun- dredfold in the last 40 years to over 1,200 employees worldwide impres- sively illustrates that the right course was set at that time to put the young family business on the road to suc- cess in the long term. In the truest sense of the word: Heuft received the first patent for a truly ingenious invention by the com- pany’s founder, which still defines the state of the art today in the accurate standing high-speed rejection of faulty empty and full containers: the Heuft Delta-FW multi-segment flow rejec- tor. Several rejection fingers which can be pneumatically retracted and extended individually form a curve which removes each faulty bottle from the line upright and without wobbling but leaves the adjacent good contain- ers there. It has only been slightly modified but it still defines the state of the art today regarding the auto- matic high-speed rejection of faulty empty and full containers. It was also important to uncover the causes of the quality defects detected at an early stage and without human intervention: a specially developed locator function already carried out something similar in 1980 by automatically determin- ing the filler valve responsible for the filling error detected. Therefore what others are only turning into a trend today was already possible at that time: preventive maintenance. Over 500 further patents have been added since then - and thus genuine technological unique selling points that not only sustainably opti- mise inline quality assurance in the filling and packaging of beverages, food and pharmaceuticals, but also the efficiency of entire lines. From the first optical fill level check to the multi-processing filling manage- ment system, from the first empty bottle inspector in efficient straight-line opera- tion to the all-surface empty container inspection on a footprint of less than one square metre, from the unique pulsed X-ray to the company’s own real-time image processing, from clean labelling to precise labelling inspection, from harmonious conveyor control to comprehensive line analysis: a broad spectrum of innovative technologies from the modular Heuft modular system has been setting standards for efficient inline quality assurance for 40 years. Right from the start, basic research and solution development focused not only on maximum auto- mation in precise product tracking, reliable defect detection and targeted defect rejection, but also on consistent user support. The systems from the modular Heuft Spectrum series available since the early 1990s already had screens as stand- ard. The Heuft Pilot, a self programmed graphical user interface, offering the operator even more overview and orien- tation is added less than ten years later with the Heuft Spectrum TX. And the net- work interface which has been integrated since then reduces the effort required for line analysis and maintenance: essential operating, production and quality data are automatically recorded and evalu- ated with the Heuft Profiler introduced in 2002. In addition remote diagnosis and maintenance is possible for the first time with the Heuft TeleService. It was also possible to centrally manage and convert the brands and recipes to be processed by Heuft Spectrum II devices as from 2015. In the third generation, Alexandra Heuft (right) and Bastian Heuft (left) take over the company. The Prime Minister of the Rhineland-Pfalz Mrs Malu Dreyer (middle) was also invited. “The family business Heuft is exemplary for our strong middle class and an excellent visiting card for the economic and employment location Rhineland- Pfalz”, said the Minister President.