The Food and Beverage Adopt Automation to Mitigate Emerging Challenges

Food and beverage producers and distributors face new challenges as new market trends and drivers emerge.

FREMONT, CA: Manufacturing companies worldwide are implementing automation and new technology with positive results, including increased productivity, higher efficiency, and business growth.

The food and beverage industry is embracing robotic process automation (RPA) at a rapid pace. The benefits of automation are proving numerous as innovative companies discover how to take advantage of them.

Businesses can overcome today's challenges and prepare for the future by implementing automation solutions.

High costs: The aging population and the growing reluctance of workers to work in cold/freezer environments have limited labor availability and increased labor costs. This has a substantial impact on distribution costs.

While producers are automating their processing lines, distribution, and warehousing still require a lot of labor. Numerous companies across many sectors have increased labor productivity by hiring more people in recent years. Many companies now recognize automation as a useful tool for increasing labor productivity.

Land availability: Cost pressures drive manufacturers and distributors to consolidate their facilities. Operations can lower warehousing and transport costs if they reduce the number of distribution points in their networks. Industry players in the food and beverage sector continue consolidating their distribution operations next to their manufacturing lines. This eliminates the need for finished goods to be shipped from a processing facility to a warehouse.

Conventional manual storage and handling solutions can be prohibitive due to limited land availability and rising land costs, especially in high-density urban areas.

Customer service: Food and beverage producers are more challenged than any other industry in delivering the right product to consumers in the right quantity and at the right time. Food distributors are less tolerant of late deliveries or incorrect products. Late or incomplete deliveries can lead to out-of-stock shelves and penalties when shipments do not arrive on time or do not arrive at all. Distribution operations must maintain a proper inventory of the correct product and dispatch orders promptly. Operations must ensure that distribution functions do not cause bottlenecks, which can stop production lines. It is also important to achieve all of this cost-effectively.