Code & Marking Inspection Systems — OCR / OCV & Code Verification

Regulated packaging usually needs OCV plus code verification, because a decodable-but-marginal symbol will fail somewhere downstream in the supply chain even if your reader accepts it.

If your specific requirement is date, lot, batch or expiry codes, our Date & Lot Code Verification System page covers that station in detail — expected-value sourcing, substrate-specific imaging and validation.

OCR

Recognize characters; output a string. No expectation supplied.

OCV

Compare printed characters to the expected string; fail on mismatch or degradation.

Code reading

Decode a 1D/2D symbol; success means decodable, not well printed.

Code verification

Grade symbol quality against ISO/IEC 15416 / 15415 style criteria under controlled optics.

An OCV station is only as strong as its source of truth. If the operator types the date into the vision HMI, you have verified the operator's typing. Pulling the expected string from the work order, MES or the coder's own job data closes that loop.

• Preferred: expected string delivered from MES/ERP per work order.
• Acceptable: string pushed from the coder controller and cross-checked by vision.
• Weak: manual entry at the vision HMI with no second source.
• Always: log the expected value, the read value, the verdict and the image reference.

• Resolve enough pixels across the narrowest stroke — a common working target is several pixels per stroke, not per character.
• Contrast, not resolution, is the usual failure: inkjet on kraft, laser on metallized film and thermal transfer on gloss each need a different lighting geometry.
• Dot-matrix inkjet characters need enough resolution to separate dots without merging them into blobs.
• For deforming substrates, constrain the region of interest or add a locator feature so the string is found before it is read.

VisionAxiom delivers this as a complete inspection system, not a parts list: application analysis, imaging and illumination design, station architecture, VSA Inspect configuration, PLC and reject integration, quality records, and a validation run against written acceptance criteria.

• Application → imaging: optics, lighting geometry, resolution and timing budget derived from your part and line speed.
• Imaging → VSA Inspect: inspection logic, per-SKU recipes, reason codes and operator screens configured per application.
• VSA Inspect → controls: PASS / FAIL / NO READ to the PLC inside the reject window, with a specified fail-safe default.
• Controls → data: image and verdict records retained for traceability, with the schema documented.
• Validation: at-speed run on a labeled sample panel, with escapes and false rejects reported separately.