Lee Coffey, strategic marketing manager-consumer packaged goods at Rockwell Automation (www.rockwellautomation.com), says although food and beverage manufacturers may slightly lag other industries when it comes to digital transformation, momentum is building.

“We’re having conversations with executives that are thinking bigger than ever — reimagining both manufacturing and supply chain processes — and we’re engaging with customers that are at different stages of maturity,” he says.

Technology often moves at a pace so quickly today that identifying and solving the next big hurdle can become more and more challenging. Therefore, digitalization continues to become more critical for a few reasons.

Ripe for the picking

Digitalization initiatives can help processors meet regulatory demands or optimization targets. Various global organizations and standards, such as the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), EU Food Regulation (EU), Codex Alimentarius Commission (World Health Organization and Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations), and the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI), carry requirements ensuring food safety and quality, and consumer protection, says Josh Hartman, vertical market strategy leader for Dematic (www.dematic.com).

“Although regulations vary by country and region, there is a general theme of traceability across them all,” he explains. “Traceability is critical in understanding how, where and when raw materials and ingredients travel through production to finished goods and packaging and eventually to its final destination.”

Hartman says the past decade has seen growth in Industrial Internet of Things devices, RFID tags and GPS trackers, which help companies track and monitor location, condition, temperature, humidity, pH and other attributes of raw materials and finished products throughout the supply chain. Smarter data systems then work with these devices to provide deeper and faster insights to operators, helping with production quality control, smarter packaging, energy management and traceability and compliance elements.

“From an operational optimization standpoint, digitization coupled with real-time analytics can help drive a great deal of value within the supply chain,” he adds. “Understanding operational design, and marrying that information with how product flows in and out, can enable you to make ongoing, smarter adjustments that maximize efficiencies in throughput and storage capacity.”

Some segments of the food & beverage marketplace are blazing the trail, with seafood, meat, dairy and cold-chain logistics operations leading the way on digitalization, based on the need for the tracking and monitoring mentioned above. For those, product quality, temperature and humidity are mission critical, and smart sensors can capture that information in processing plants, in transport and at the final destination, and relay it back to the FSQA team for analysis. This technology can be used to track livestock on the ranch or farm as well, Hartman says.

Work-in-progress for some

Some processors might struggle with the data avalanche that often comes with digitalization, Coffey says, such as how to collect and store it, but more importantly, how to analyze it.

“With the rapid adoption of intelligent devices, companies are now generating more data than ever before,” he says. “However, many still struggle to extract actionable insights from this data.”

He suggests Operational Technology (OT) DataOps solutions that take that huge amount of data, aggregate and contextualize it, and help processors utilize it for trend analysis, analytics and artificial intelligence (AI) modeling. Hartman reminds processors of the need for a proper, central point of control for any data systems they might use.

“Full optimization requires more than a solid stack of warehouse management, execution and control systems,” he says. “You need a centralized control tower that pulls all of that information together, coupled with a strong analytics layer to pull out the most critical and actionable data in real time.”

Additionally, companies still relying on periodic, manual product quality checks can turn to machine vision and AI to fully digitize their product inspection functions and work the data into action items. Doing so would give plants real-time, data-driven insights despite the high speeds of the production lines, detect product defects with greater accuracy, reduce product waste, improve compliance and ensure quality as well, Coffey notes.

Every plant and every company is different, but the right approach to tech implementation can help solve many operational challenges, Hartman says. Labor shortages, cost increases, maximizing storage density and proliferation of SKUs all can be overcome with the proper automation.

“At its core, a solid automation approach will enable you to do more with less,” Hartman notes. “Processors can achieve more throughput with less labor through the right mix of mechatronics, systems and analytics.”

Macroeconomic factors such as inflation have changed many processors’ approaches to maintaining their margins. Gone are the days when consumers would accept more price increases on products. Instead, Coffey says, they are trading down and looking for cheaper alternatives, which is driving processors to focus on operational productivity for cost control and yield optimization.

He adds there has been increased interest in more visibility into the areas of material loss and in leveraging AI to drive data-driven optimization. Meanwhile, cybersecurity remains an important consideration for processors taking on these initiatives.

“As digital transformation initiatives accelerate, it also increases the potential threat landscape. Additionally, many companies face challenges in fully mapping out their plant floor assets,” Coffey says. “Therefore, to enhance their cybersecurity posture, we’re seeing more companies reaching out for comprehensive network and security assessments to help identify all devices, assess risks and prioritize upgrades based on criticality.”

Protecting the data protects the equipment and systems running the plants, which in turn keeps facilities, workers and end products safe — the human element that remains among the highest priorities for most companies as the industry continues to push into the digital age.