How Food Industry can Leverage Automation

Automation optimises a company’s food operations for more accurate performance, minimises bottlenecks and eventually improves productivity outcomes.

FREMONT, CA: Manufacturers are applying various countermeasure strategies to tackle the challenges captured by the VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) issues. Companies finding difficulty monitoring manufacturing, assembly, or shipping processes can integrate automation for a global view, interconnecting machines and obtaining valuable information for businesses.

In such challenging conditions, automation is the most effective solution for succeeding. Automation, along with robots, artificial intelligence, and IoT, enhances food quality, brings several other benefits to the food industry, and streamlines processes.

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Food Safety and Quality

Many food companies worry about safety and product quality. As there are many touchpoints along the supply chain, sufficient quality control is imperative at each of them. With modern automation, it is easier to discover problems at any point in the supply chain in time.

Automation in the food industry assists businesses in identifying the source of quality issues. This helps companies to take remedial measures and prevent recurring issues. Firms struggling to meet tough quality standards find that automation offers a solution to meet and generate quality levels reliably.

Improved Efficiency and Productivity

Implementing automated solutions in food manufacturing processes will help meet the demands and scale up through the efficiency and productivity advantages of automation in the food industry. It also increases production line flexibility. Modularisation, or production segmentation, is a major improvement, enhancing flexibility. Companies can introduce advancements in one segment without slowing down other segments.

Automation elevates a company's efficiency and profitability while positively impacting employees’ tasks. After deploying automation solutions in a company, employees are spared from non-value-adding or repetitive tasks enabling them to focus on tasks requiring human intervention and know-how. Automation also creates opportunities for workers to upskill, combining their experience with processes in their organisations with automation-related technical skills to work on new challenges and leverage processes further. Automation facilitating data mining is crucial for businesses tending to benefit from data analytics. An automated system allows easy data collection that offers critical insights.

Improved Employee Safety

The food industry faces many risks, especially in manufacturing, which is prone to chemical hazards, blades, heat, etc. Automation can effectively tackle these as it deals with risks associated with the infamous three Ds: dirty, dull, and dangerous. Despite food processing factories prioritising employee safety and training, there are still exposures to heavy machines, dangerous chemicals, and extreme noise. For example, employees in food retail facilities perform repetitive reaching and lifting activities, which expose them to injuries.

With the instability due to the pandemic, the food industry has undergone a drastic transformation. Irrespective of food products’ size and type, automation is an optimal method to consider. As stated above, it offers many benefits, including food quality, scalability, and cost reduction.