Why Clear Plastic is the Persistent Problem in Protein

Clear plastic is everywhere in a beef plant - liner film, bags, wrap, totes - and it is a serious food safety risk precisely because it is nearly invisible. It passes X-ray and metal detection because it isn't dense or conductive. It gets past trained inspectors because it disappears against wet product under plant lighting. Which means it has traditionally been discovered by your customer, not by you.

Why Clear Plastic is a  Risk

Beyond the technical difficulty of detection, clear plastic represents a major threat to both consumer safety and a manufacturer’s bottom line:

• Injury and choking hazards: Sharp shards from rigid plastic can cause dental damage or internal lacerations, while thin films pose a high choking risk for children and the elderly.
• Microbial vectors: Plastic fragments aren't just physical hazards; they often carry "hitchhiking" bacteria like Listeria or Salmonella from warehouse environments or raw ingredient handling.
• High recall costs: Because it often bypasses standard detectors, clear plastic is a common cause of "undetected" material reaching the market, triggering multi-million dollar recalls.
• Brand and regulatory risk: A single viral photo of a plastic contaminant can destroy consumer trust overnight. Furthermore, global standards (like FSMA and SQF) now demand technology that goes beyond basic metal detection.

A First-of-its-Kind AI Model Closes the Gap

The new SiftAI® FM platform includes an industry-first AI detection capability for clear plastic - built on years of real-world deployment data from meat and poultry operations and the platform's redesigned lighting system, which presents product to the AI engine with the clarity and consistency this detection demands.

And it's One Model Among Many, Running at Once

Clear plastic is the headline, but the same system is simultaneously watching for gloves, films, cardboard, rubber, wood, and indigenous material - SiftAI® FM includes TensorUP® high-performance computing to run several AI models at the same time, so covering a new FM type doesn't mean giving up another.

For QA & Food Safety

‍A documented control, not a best effort

Manual inspection depends on a person catching a defect in the moment; attention fades, shifts change, and misses leave no record. A vision system inspects every product continuously and backs each check with an image log, turning your last visual check into evidence: when a customer calls about FM, you pull the record for that production window instead of reconstructing what an inspector might have seen. Detection trending by defect type shows where FM is entering (shift, source, supplier, etc.), so the program improves upstream, not just at the belt, and even clear plastic, which human inspectors reliably miss, moves from "known residual risk" to a monitored category.

For Operations

‍Keep the line moving and the combos clean

‍Inspection at production line speed means food safety stops being a throughput tradeoff. Fewer FM events reaching customers means fewer rejected loads, less retained product, and less good trim condemned alongside a contaminated combo. The redesigned lighting and continuously refined models are engineered specifically to keep false rejects - the tax on any inspection point - trending down over the system's life.

For Engineering

‍Installs over the line you already run

A compact footprint that mounts above existing conveyance, sized to your belt width, with waterfall configurations providing top and bottom inspection of trim in minimal line space; full surface coverage without added conveyor length. Standard power, Ethernet connectivity, rejection tied into existing or KPM-supplied mechanisms;  an integration project measured in line layout, not line redesign.

For Sanitation & Maintenance

‍Nothing about pre-op changes

‍The SiftAI HD generation carries an IP69K Extreme Hygiene-rated design: food-grade stainless steel and hard-coated polycarbonate, engineered to prevent harborage points, supporting full washdown without any changes to existing sanitation protocols - validated against common chemistries including EnviroKlor Plus, Acidiquat 4, Redi-Solve B, One Step Alkali, and Decon-7. Maintenance access clearance is specified up front so it's serviceable where it's installed.

For Leadership

‍Brand protection you can put in front of a customer

‍A single FM event in trim can cost more than the inspection point ever will: rejected combos, downstream grinder claims, retained product, and a customer relationship that took years to build. Continuous, image-backed inspection changes the conversation - when a major account audits your FM program, you show them a monitored control with detection records and trending data, not a policy that depends on an inspector's attention. That evidence shortens audits, strengthens supplier scorecards, and turns your food safety program from a cost of doing business into a reason customers award volume to your plant instead of the one down the road.

The Hardware: A Compact Vision Head Over Your Existing Line

SiftAI® FM is a self-contained machine vision system comprised of a high-performance camera, onboard computer, TensorUP® AI computing, and industrial controls mounted over the belt with LED lighting and an at-line HMI. It installs above the existing conveyance; typical mounting puts the camera enclosure roughly 508 mm (20 in) over the belt, with configurations for belt widths from 305 mm (12 in) up to 1219 mm (48 in). And, it runs on 120V or 240V with an Ethernet connection.

The Lighting: Designed to See Trim the Way the AI Needs to

Beef trim is reflective, wet, and variable in color and texture - the conditions that generate false readings in conventional vision systems. SiftAI FM's upgraded lighting system illuminates product with greater clarity and consistency across the field of view, producing higher-quality image data and reducing the reflectivity "noise" that erodes trust in an inspection point. Better light in means fewer false detections out.

The AI: Models Trained on Your Product, Maintained by KPM, Proven Over Years of Deployment

‍The SiftAI® platform has been deployed across meat and poultry processing operations since its introduction in 2022, and its detection models carry years of that real-world refinement. KPM handles model creation and updates using its patented methods, and the lifecycle is managed, not static:

1. AI training: after installation, KPM's AI developers work with your team to build a dataset of the FM types in your risk profile.
2. Initial performance monitoring: test runs are recorded and monitored remotely by KPM's AI developers.
3. Model augmentation: improvements are made based on system performance and your team's expectations.
4. Continued refinement: fine-tuning over the system's life improves accuracy and reduces false positives, so the line crew doesn't learn to ignore alarms.

Kept Current by KPM, Supported Remotely

‍SiftAI® FM runs on an annual support plan covering software, security, and AI model updates, maintained remotely by KPM's team of AI training experts. Every deployment gets smarter over time - your model doesn't age out, and your maintenance team isn't on the hook for AI upkeep.

Rejection Handling Configured to Your Process

On detection, the system can drive a KPM-designed rejection mechanism, route the defect to secondary processing, alarm the line, or flag the event on the at-line HMI for operator review and action. Operators view a live production stream and label detections at-line; QA reviews the historical log, filterable by defect type, with images, for verification, trending, and audit response.

Density-Based Detection has a Blind Spot, and it's Most of Your Complaint Log

Metal detectors and X-ray discriminate by density and conductivity. A cotton glove, liner film, blue plastic off a lugger, a wood splinter from a pallet can pass a density-based CCP without a flag. If it's low-density and visible, the only thing standing between it and the combo has been a person.

Manual Inspection is a Sampling Plan, Not a Control

Human trim inspection degrades with fatigue, turnover, and shift-to-shift variation. When a customer FM complaint lands, "we have inspectors on the line" is a procedure, not evidence. An automated vision inspection point turns that last visual check into a continuous, documented control with an image behind every event.

Trim Goes Everywhere. So Does the Liability

Trim feeds grinding operations - yours or your customer's. FM that leaves your dock becomes a downstream discovery: a complaint, a rejected load, retained product, a grinder tear-down. Catching it before the combo closes is the cheapest place in the chain to catch it.

SiftAI® FM detects visible foreign material regardless of density - including the categories that generate the most customer complaints in ground beef supply chains, and the one that historically nothing caught.

• Clear Plastic - NEW
• Colored & hard plastic
• Soft plastics & films
• Paper / cardboard
• Gloves, uniform & PPE fragments
• Fat & sinew clumps
• Ear tags & ID chips
• Rubber
• Wood

The same platform inspects beef, pork, and poultry; fish and seafood; root crops; IQF ingredients; dairy; and more - trained per product.