Quality Control on the Line

Worker Visually Inspects Crown Royal Bottles for Quality, circa 1948; 96.X1.36.

There were two locations on the bottling line where the women conducted quality control checks. After the bottles were filled, they passed in front of a lightbox where a worker visually inspected the contents for any foreign matter. After the bottles were fully "dressed", a mirror was used to check both the front and back of the bottles to ensure that quality control standards were met. Any bottles with defective labels, ribbons, or caps, were removed from the line and the contents were emptied for reuse.

"As a quality control technician, you came in, in the morning, and the first thing was to draw samples from all the bottling lines, look at the product on the lines, organoleptically, to make sure it met our standards so you could give the bottling [department] the approval to run the lines.  Also … you used to do a strength test to make sure the product met the government's and the company's guidelines.

Then once the lines had started running, then you'd also be involved in checking the fill heights … if it was twenty-five ounces, you made sure it was twenty-five ounces.  You also had to check the packaging coming off the end of the line to make sure the package was a very reasonable package, in other words - a straight label, neck wrap, all the components were on the package, the caps on proper, the strip stamp on, the labels all lined up.  You wanted a very attractive package at the other end of the line going out."

Tom Schwann, Waterloo quality control technician, 1965 to 1968.