How IIoT Can Improve Food and Beverage Bottom Lines
28/03/2019 Stratus Technologies Systems Ltd
By Jason Andersen, VP of business line management, Stratus TechnologiesPrecise control over food and beverage production is in the spotlight as health-conscious consumers are increasingly paying close attention to the ingredients and labeling of their products. So, to protect consumers, governments are closely regulating the traceability, manufacturing, and labeling of food and beverage products. Meanwhile, increased competition and narrow margins in food manufacturing are making efficient production essential in driving ROI and business viability.
These converging factors are amplifying the importance of close monitoring and analysis in food and beverage supply chains.
Fortunately, forward-looking enterprises are harnessing this momentum and creating more intelligent supply chains through embracing automation and the industrial internet of things (IIoT). By investing in modern production equipment and IT architectures, food and beverage manufacturers can maximise the speed and consistency of their production lines.
Here's how IIoT deployments can have a major impact on a food and beverage producer's bottom line:
Ensuring food safety
IIoT offers food and beverage businesses extremely beneficial connectedness, data collection capabilities and speed. By connecting devices throughout a production environment to collect operational data, the IIoT can simplify food safety controls.
An example from the consumer Internet of Things (IoT) helps to illustrate the point. Consumers are now purchasing IoT-connected kitchen appliances like smart ovens that allow them to remotely monitor and adjust their cooking by changing convection and temperature. The benefits of the connected IoT extend to grocers as well, who might use smart refrigerators to ensure inventory is properly stored and managed.
IIoT can play a similar role in maximising food safety through remote temperature and conditions monitoring. Producers can use this information to automate slow, manual monitoring processes of different refrigeration units and thus increase production efficiency by saving time and labor. Even more importantly, automating food safety controls can help manufacturers protect an enterprise from the reputational damage of catastrophic brand recalls.
Real-time quality control analysis
Similarly, the IIoT can help food manufacturers guarantee their food is free of any hazards and meet regulatory challenges. Traditional hazard analysis requires manual collection and lab testing of food samples. In the future, automated devices at the network edge will test samples in-line and provide real-time data from chemical and spectroscopic analysis. Once again, IIoT devices will help producers save the time and energy required to test food samples, helping products get to market faster and fresher.
Minimizing decontamination costs
Analyzing food production in real time can also decrease the response time in potential decontamination efforts. This dramatically reduces the food and water waste costs associated with quality problems. The cost of decontamination efforts is lower when quality issues are caught earlier in the production process; as potentially unsafe food move throughout a facility, so do potential contaminations, requiring more expensive corrective efforts.
Complying with regulations
Another major benefit of the IIoT is the ability can significantly streamline regulatory processes in food and beverage production. Using IIoT devices at the network edge, manufacturers can collect, analyze, and transmit production data in real-time. This real-time data can help production plants identify necessary interventions to rectify food safety and increase their response time.
By helping anticipate regulatory noncompliance, food and beverage manufacturers can ensure they avoid regulatory fines and protect their brand from reputational risk.
Improving processing consistency
Particularly in food and beverage processing, efficient, consistent production is essential to ROI. By automating vital processing systems, producers can improve product consistency by minimizing the variability of a manual production process.
With edge-enabled IIoT devices, however, manufacturers can yield even more consistent products. By connecting production devices and empowering them to share data in real-time, food and beverage producers can detect data anomalies that signal production issues. This allows producers to then take measures to course-correct ongoing production, minimizing both product variability and waste.
Measuring the impact of IIoT
Changing consumer tastes and preferences, government regulation and an extremely competitive make production data essential in food and beverage manufacturing. To maximize manufacturing and processing operations, food and beverage producers are tapping the emerging IIoT to unlock new value in their supply chains.
For more information, please visit: www.stratus.com
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