Home / Solutions / Best before date inspection
Best Before Date Inspection
Read and validate every date. Reject every mistake.
Automatically read and verify best-before dates, expiry dates and batch codes at full production speed, even on curved, reflective or difficult-to-read packaging.
MarshallAI combines AI-powered OCR with production-aware date validation to catch incorrect, unreadable and invalid codes before products leave your line.
Inspect at full line speed
Catch and reject all date related mistakes
Automatically switch between SKUs
Meet us at BrauBeviale 2026 on the 10-12th of November | Hall 10 stand 10-139. Book a live demo.
Every product gets the date it should have
A best-before date can be printed perfectly and still be wrong.
- The wrong month.
- The wrong year.
- A date from the previous production run.
- An unreadable character.
- An impossible calendar date.
MarshallAI doesn’t just look for text.
It reads the code and checks whether it is correct.
What MarshallAI checks
- Best-before and expiry dates
Read printed dates automatically and verify them against the expected production and shelf-life parameters. - Batch and lot codes
Read and verify batch numbers, lot codes and other production identifiers at line speed. - Date format
Check that the printed date follows the expected format — for example:
DD.MM.YYYY
MM/YYYY
BEST BEFORE 12/2027 - Calendar validity
Detect impossible dates and invalid values before they reach the customer. - Shelf-life validation
Compare the printed best-before date against the production date and expected shelf life. - Print quality
Detect missing, incomplete, distorted or unreadable characters before the product leaves the line.
Accurate inspections from any surface
Best-before codes are rarely printed under laboratory conditions.
MarshallAI inspects best-before codes from:
- Curved aluminium cans
- Reflective metal
- Glass bottles
- PET packaging
- Labels and sleeves
- Low-contrast surfaces
- Uneven or distorted print
- High-speed moving products
Automatic SKU detection
MarshallAI can automatically identify the current product or SKU and apply the correct inspection criteria without requiring an operator to manually reconfigure the inspection program between every changeover.
New SKU → Correct inspection rules → Immediate verification
No manual adjustment or fine tuning.
One inspection platform. More than just dates.
The same vision system can be extended to inspect other quality-critical features on your line.
- Best-before dates
- Batch & lot codes
- Labels
- SKU identity
- Print quality
- Barcodes & QR codes
- Foreign / rogue products
- Packaging defects
Start with one inspection task, see the results and expand as your quality requirements grow.
Case studies
-
Mastering QA in High-Mix Manufacturing: Rapid Changeovers and >99% Accuracy at TaerosolContract manufacturing and frequent product changeovers used to mean a constant struggle with QA bottlenecks. Discover how Taerosol future-proofed their cosmetics line with a rapidly adaptable AI system that catches over 99% of complex label and packaging defects.
Cosmetic manufacturing Quality assurance
-
Eliminating Rogue Cans: High-Speed QA in Beverage ManufacturingA global beverage manufacturer spent 15 years trying to reliably intercept “rogue cans” on their high-speed filling lines. Discover how MarshallAI deployed a minimal latency edge vision system to inspect 2,500 cans per minute, preventing mismatched products and costly mechanical jams with near-perfect precision.
Beverage industry Quality assurance
Questions & Answers
Can you verify whether a best-before date is actually correct?
Yes. MarshallAI can do more than read the characters. The system can validate the date against predefined production rules, including date format, calendar validity, production time and expected shelf life.
What happens when a faulty label is detected?
We can issue an alert, halt the line or integrate with a rejection mechanism. Timelined statistics are also provided for total products and faulty products for OEE optimisation and root cause analysis.
Can it tell two labels apart that only differ by one small detail?
Yes. The system verifies a label’s full identity and print quality rather than comparing against a single similarity threshold, so it catches differences that a coarser pattern-match would treat as acceptable.
Does it read barcodes and 2D codes on labels?
Yes, 1D barcodes and 2D codes such as DataMatrix and QR are read and verified in the same pass as the rest of the label.
Does inspection data leave our facility?
No. Processing runs entirely on-site. Label images and production data stay on your network.
