Agric. Econ. - Czech, 2012, 58(12):549-556 | DOI: 10.17221/123/2012-AGRICECON

Design of experiments for the analysis and optimization of barcodes of food and agricultural productsOriginal Paper

Jan HRON

Department of Management, Faculty of Economics and Management, Czech University of Life Sciences Prague, Czech Republic

The tools and modern techniques used in the Design of Experiments (DOE) have been proved successful in meeting the challenge of continuous improvement of food and agricultural products over the last fifteen years. The current methodological appliance of the DOE is represented by the set of scientific methods for identifying the significant and/or critical parameters associated with the process and thereby determining the optimal settings for those process variables which are able to enhance the performance and capability of the response (e.g. the selected character of a product quality). However, recent researches have shown that the application of these techniques in the food-processing industry and agricultural production are limited due to the lack of statistical knowledge required for their effective implementation (especially in small and medium-sized manufacturing companies). Therefore, this paper focuses on the modified DOE methods (for use in a community of scientists and product engineers), which overcome the problem of statistics by taking a unique approach using graphical tools. The same outcomes and conclusions are reached as by those approaches using statistical methods and the potential users will find the concept in this paper both familiar and easy to understand. In this way, it will ensure a broad practical application of the methodology that is described in this paper. From the theoretical point of view, the main objective of the paper is to optimize the barcode printing processes on food packaging through the effective application of the DOE techniques in order to discover the significant process parameters which affect the means of the so-called "Z-module" (defines the nominal width of the narrow elements), "GS1 International" (defines certain size ranges), "PCS measurement" (means Print Contrast Signal measurement) and also in order to discover the key parameters which affect their variabilities.

Keywords: barcode, design of experiments, food packaging, manufacturing process, optimization, printing

Published: December 31, 2012  Show citation