The document discusses how Steam Whistle Brewery automated their bottle inspection process with help from Omron Canada. Steam Whistle was previously inspecting bottles manually, which was inefficient and error-prone. An Omron employee saw Steam Whistle on TV and realized automation could help. With samples from Omron and design support from Steam Whistle, they created an automated vision system using an Omron camera that inspects bottles on a conveyor, identifies defects, and diverts faulty bottles for less than $20,000. The new system improves accuracy over manual inspection and saves Steam Whistle money.

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MARCH/APRIL 2003A CLB MEDIA PUBLICATION
M A N U F A C T U R I N G
M A C H I N E D E S I G N • S Y S T E M S • T E C H N O L O G Y
BREW-HA-HA!Steam Whistle is laughing all the way to
the bank with its money-saving bottle
inspection system ...14
BREW-HA-HA!Steam Whistle is laughing all the way to
the bank with its money-saving bottle
inspection system ...14
MA.Mar.03 6/11/04 10:21 AM Page 1

2. BY ALISON DUNN
C
olin Cartwright never watches
the City TV program Breakfast
Television. In fact, he’s proba-
bly only seen the popular Toronto
morning show twice in the eight years
he’s lived in Toronto. But if Cartwright,
a corporate accounts specialist with
Omron Canada, hadn’t caught the
show one morning before he left for
work, he would have missed a great
opportunity to help one company’s
automation process.
One of Breakfast Television’s “rov-
ing reporters” was broadcasting a
remote location shoot from the Steam
Whistle beer brewery in downtown
Toronto. While Cartwright was watch-
ing the show, he picked up on some-
thing in the background that the aver-
age viewer might not have noticed. He
saw two women sitting in front of a
white light, manually inspecting each
and every freshly-washed beer bottle
that came down the line.
Cartwright knew there was a much
better way to inspect the bottles. The
next day, he called Cameron Heaps,
president of Steam Whistle. The timing
couldn’t have been better. Heaps was
putting the pressure on his employees
to find ways to streamline their bot-
tling system. “We had been throwing in
the towel on [the idea of automated]
inspection because of the cost, so it
was pretty exciting being able to possi-
bly get a solution,” he says.
The big breweries in Canada and
the U.S. have been using high-tech
machine vision systems to inspect their
bottles for years. Typically, these
machines can cost upwards of
$600,000. They have a lot of bells and
whistles, but it’s tough for a small or
medium- sized brewery to afford one.
Instead, Steam Whistle settled for
manual inspection.
The Steam Whistle cleaning and
inspecting process has recycled bottles
going through a high-tech bottle wash-
er. At the time Cartwright called Steam
Whistle, the bottles went through the
washer, and then two people manually
inspected each bottle.
Still, debris still manages to find its
way through. Some of the most com-
mon items the inspectors find in the
bottles are bent bottle caps and clear
plastic wrap. The job of inspecting the
bottles was most employees’ “least
favourite [work] station,” says Heaps.
All employees, including Heaps him-
self, were required to sit and inspect
bottles for 20 to 45 minutes at a time
on a shift.
Inspecting the bottles before they
are filled makes good financial sense.
Although the bottles are also inspected
after being filled, pre-inspection ensures
that dirty bottles don’t make it to the fill-
ing stage – meaning less wasted beer.
But Steam Whistle’s inspection
process was far from foolproof. Any
process where two human beings stare
at empty beer bottles will increase the
room for error. People can get tired,
which makes it harder to peer at the
bottles for long periods of time. Also,
as Heaps says, some people are better
at the inspecting process than others.
Cartwright thought his team could
come up with an automated system for
Steam Whistle that wouldn’t break the
bank. He set up a meeting
with Heaps and Steam
Whistle’s maintenance
manager, Charlie Mifsud.
Cartwright convinced the
pair to let him take some
bottles back to his office
to do some preliminary
tests using Omron’s F150
vision system.
Steam Whistle gave
Cartwright samples of
both clean and dirty bot-
tles for the testing process.
Cartwright turned up a
week later and carried out
a live demonstration.
Mifsud and Heaps then tried their own
tests, simulating what they typically
find in dirty bottles on the line – put-
ting Saran wrap inside, Saran wrap
over the top and all kinds of different
scenarios. “Every one that they tried,
our vision system caught,” says
Cartwright.
They sat down and worked out a
budget, and it was time to get to work.
Cartwright brought in Benjamin
Hawks, a vision systems specialist with
Omron. The pair worked closely with
Mifsud, who they credit with creating
much of the final product’s design.
“Charlie was the one who put every-
thing together,” says Cartwright. “We
helped him with the programming and
stuff like that, but all the mechanical
process and inspection was Charlie.”
The completed inspection system
works by having the bottle come down
the production line into something
called a “star wheel.” The star wheel
suspends the bottle above the conveyor
by means of a small vacuum. The
wheel then passes the bottle under the
camera, while the camera takes a pic-
ture. The camera is the eyes and brains
of the system, but the star wheel and
vacuum make up an integral part of the
complete inspection machine.
Fractions of a second later, the sys-
tem will decide if a bottle is either
good or bad. The system then tells the
star wheel where to place the bottles.
The good bottles will continue their
way down the conveyor for filling,
and the bad bottles will be diverted to
a separate conveyor for a Steam
Whistle employee to collect at the end
of the day.
Mifsud cobbled together the sys-
tem almost entirely using sample
Omron parts that Cartwright and
Hawks keep in their cars to show
potential customers. “The sensor that
is on [Steam Whistle’s vision system]
right now is a sample,” says
Cartwright. “We were trying to get a
signal, and we needed a sensor. I said,
‘Hang on. I’m just going to my car.’
The sample is still in there.”
Once Mifsud created the system, he
had to work it into the production line.
“The biggest issue was actually getting
the bottle off the line so the system
could look at it with a light below,”
Cartwright says. “That’s where Charlie
applied the star wheel, and rebuilt it.”
Next, they conducted tests in
Mifsud’s workshop on the machine
before it got put on the line. At the end
of last year, it was finally ready and
Mifsud got it integrated into the pro-
duction line. “It’s very, very reliable.
It’s working out,” says Cartwright.
The bottles that the system diverts
are checked at the end of the day. If it’s
just dirt in the bottles they are run
through the washer again. The Steam
Whistle staff also manually removes
bent bottle caps, paper, plastic wrap,
potato chip bags and other debris in
otherwise intact bottles and runs them
through the washer again. If it’s a
defective bottle, it is destroyed.
The whole process took Omron
and Steam Whistle about 10 months to
complete. Heaps, for one, says he’s
happy with the results. “We get much
better accuracy with the machine. I
hate to say it, but in this case, the
machine is better.”
In the end, the project cost Steam
Whistle less than $20,000. And both
the Steam Whistle team and their ven-
dor remain grateful to a different kind
of vision that brought them together
— television.
“If it wasn’t for the Breakfast
Television spot, none of this would
have happened,” says Heaps.
Alison Dunn is the editor of
Manufacturing AUTOMATION.
March/April 2003 www.automationmag.com
Machine vision
BREW-HA-HA!
Steam Whistle Brewing is laughing all the
way to the bank with its money-saving
bottle inspection system
Charlie Mifsud and Cameron Heaps show off part of the production line at the
Steam Whistle brewery.
Maintenance manager Charlie Mifsud demonstrates how bottle caps, or crowns, can
remain in the bottle after washing.
With the old manual inspection system, Steam Whistle shone a white light behind the
bottles to check for debris.
The new inspection system uses a monitor to show any
debris in the bottom of the bottles.
Anabel Fernandez, Steam Whistle’s Quality Control Coordinator, demonstrates how
she used to manually inspect the bottles.
Photocredit:BruceHoggPhotocredit:OmronCanadaPhotocredit:OmronCanada
Photocredit:OmronCanadaPhotocredit:OmronCanada
MA.Mar.03 6/11/04 10:21 AM Page 2