Here are four modernization efforts that can help manufacturers kickstart their digital transformation to increase efficiencies, improve product quality, reduce costs and maximize profits.
RS has submitted this post. Written by Chanakya Gupta, Senior Offer Manager – Machine Solutions & Digital Services, Schneider Electric.
The food & beverage industry is currently growing at 8.7 percent and is projected to be worth $8.9 trillion by 2026, according to Research and Markets’ 2022 report on the global food & beverage market. This growth presents opportunities and challenges for manufacturers, many of which must modernize production lines within the next three years to remain competitive and compliant.
On one hand, we can view this trend with a massive sigh of relief considering the challenges the industry faced in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. On the other hand, it poses a variety of challenges for food & beverage manufacturers that aren’t ready to take advantage of these opportunities.
Food & beverage manufacturers will have competing priorities ranging from product diversification to product quality and ingredient traceability, as well as output efficiency and conformance to an evolving environmental, social and governance (ESG) regulatory landscape. It’s a lot to manage for companies of any size. According to some estimates, manufacturers only have a three-year window to modernize their production lines or risk their ability to remain competitive.
Luckily, with so many advanced products and strategies manufacturers can adopt, there is a generational opportunity to dive headfirst into a digital transformation that will drastically increase efficiencies, improve product quality and, in the long term, reduce costs and maximize profit margins—all without losing sight of the priorities they must maintain to succeed.
Although there are a ton of opportunities for process modernization in the food & beverage industry, manufacturers at the beginning of their transformational journey can focus on four points to start making serious headway towards remaining competitive and compliant. They can update their robotic and machine controls, leverage IIoT technologies, digitize their data and embrace ESG initiatives.
Update Robotic and Machine Controls
Nearly all major food & beverage manufacturers use automation in their production lines and PLCs are one of the most widely used automation technologies in this industry. However, traditional PLC operations have been pushed to the breaking point as product demands have increased over the past 10 years, and especially when it comes to packaging processes.
This means these packaging processes offer the greatest potential for automation-related cost savings and profitability. But meeting modern demands requires faster processing capabilities, several varieties of robots and sequenced motion axes and more advanced control capabilities than traditional PLCs can provide.
Manufacturers interested in upgrading their processes have a couple of options. They can replace their PLCs with an entirely new generation of high-performance robotic and machine controllers with PLC sequence capability or upgrade their current systems with solutions including expansion modules and smart relays. Replacing traditional PLCs with high-performance, multifunctional controllers supports more complex applications at higher speeds while saving factory space. These solutions require more of an upfront investment than upgrading existing PLCs with supplementary devices, but they also deliver greater production and profitability improvements. So, manufacturers should carefully evaluate their application demands, goals and budgets to determine which solution will work best for them.
To modernize robotic and machine controls in less complex food & beverage automation applications, manufacturers can upgrade their current PLCs with supplementary solutions including expansion modules and smart relays, which provide economical, user-friendly alternatives to solutions based on cabled logic or specific cards.
Leverage IIoT Technologies
Data acquisition and analysis is a must for modern food & beverage manufacturing systems, and the best way for manufacturers to satisfy this growing need is to leverage affordable IIoT technologies capable of collecting data from legacy systems and feeding it into a seamless digital ecosystem centered around improving efficiencies, machine reliability and, most importantly, operator and equipment safety.
IIoT integration can take many forms, and manufacturers have several options to choose from based on their specific needs. For example, variable speed drives, such as Schneider Electric’s Altivar Series, now feature embedded intelligence to monitor external conditions, which can help predict failures before major disruptions occur. These predictive maintenance capabilities alone can save manufacturers thousands of dollars in machine repair, replacement costs and downtime. Many drives generate QR codes to help guide operators to the correct support documentation when an error is detected.
IIoT integration is also beneficial for regulatory compliance. In the food & beverage industry, every piece of relevant information about products, ingredients, processes and proof of regulatory food safety compliance must be properly identified and recorded. The most effective way to capture and record all of this vital data is to adopt IIoT-enabled track and trace technology that delivers information to a central hub that operators can use to monitor and improve processes as well as to comply with audits, which can drastically reduce the risk of expensive and reputation-damaging outcomes like product recalls.
Digitize Data
For some manufacturers still reliant on traditional processes, full IIoT integration might not be the right choice. In these cases, manufacturers should concentrate on digitizing as many processes as possible and moving away from paper documentation. One simple step is adopting digital recording devices, which allow operators to record individual batches via a start-and-stop button on a screen or through an external output.
When choosing the right recording product for the food & beverage industry, there are a few things to keep in mind. Due to the health-sensitive nature of these products, food & beverage manufacturers must comply with a variety of standards and regulations, including ISO 2200, FSSC 22000 and Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations. These governing bodies require that recording systems save information in a way that can’t be altered. Some recorders, such as standard PLCs, save data in a .csv file that, while easy to import into a spreadsheet, isn’t tamperproof and has no way of logging that changes occurred. Others record the data over communication lines rather than directly onto a product. So, if communications capabilities are lost for any reason, the data would also be lost.
To ensure regulatory compliance and prevent data losses, use recording devices that save data in a secure, uneditable file format that has built-in data storage capabilities.
Embrace ESG Initiatives
Although many of these modernization efforts are currently optional, it’s a mistake to believe they will remain so. The world’s increasing emphasis on ESG issues is steadily creating an environment that, while still patchy at best, is becoming more stringent by the day.
For example, although new ESG standards issued by the European Union will not be implemented until 2024, investors and ESG-conscious consumers are already putting pressure on businesses including food & beverage manufacturers. According to a recent report from Bain & Co. and the Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA), 93 percent of investors said they would walk away from an investment if it posed an ESG concern. So, the longer manufacturers wait, the more costly the consequences could be.
Although the full scale of embracing ESG can be daunting, starting small pays dividends. Digitization and IoT integration, for example, will go a long way towards ensuring that ESG-related data is properly collected, stored and organized, which can be especially helpful for reporting to regulators and investors.
For more information or for assistance identifying solutions that can help you modernize your food & beverage manufacturing processes, contact our technical product support team.
