Powerhouse Dynamics

From farm to fork, each step in the process of food delivery is open to a number of risks that may lead to serious health issues for consumers. Here, food safety practices are critical to help reduce these risks. Today, however, food safety procedures are typically manual, time consuming, and error-prone.

The onset of COVID-19 has changed the scenario and heightened organizations’ awareness of the need for more robust safety procedures. As a result, more organizations are looking to automate their food safety processes rather than relying on manual procedures as a means of reducing risk and increasing management’s visibility into any potential food safety issues.

Some companies offer temperature sensors to monitor for food safety compliance in real-time, and others provide mobile apps to capture data and food safety tasks. Powerhouse Dynamics’ “Open Kitchen” platform is at the juncture of these two functions. Open Kitchen offers both automated temperature sensors and digital HACCP task lists while also connecting to, and in many cases controlling, thousands of pieces of kitchen, HVAC, and other equipment. Open Kitchen delivers full transparency, improved equipment performance, reduced utility spend, and additional benefits.

With Open Kitchen, customers can easily automate product quality and food safety procedures.

The platform offers temperature monitoring, real-time alerts, workflow processing, corrective action tracking, and automated reporting. Customers can monitor the cooking temperature and duration.The platform is integrated with multiple types of kitchen equipment, including ovens. In one instance noted, the platform notified a customer to discard a piece of meat being cooked in the oven before it wasfully defrosted, which made it unsafe to consume. As another example of the food safety benefits of integrating directly with equipment, the platform can connect to dish machines to keep track of the temperature at which the dishes are being washed and the level of the detergent being used.

Powerhouse Dynamics’ platform also provides real-time alerts to customers and can escalate food safety alerts in cases where they are not being addressed by a particular user within a specified time frame, helping ensure that the issue is not allowed to linger. Customers can get a 360-degree view of not only one of their restaurants but of all of their restaurants across the enterprise with the Open Kitchen platform. “Basically, we aim to automate connections with all equipment within the kitchen to provide not only a standard for food safety reporting but also offer real-time alerts when a problem arises,” says Martin Flusberg, CEO of Powerhouse Dynamics.

As an example, Flusberg talks about a customer that approached Powerhouse Dynamics to integrate with their ovens. That is when Powerhouse Dynamics started integrating its platform with ovens alongside other equipment such as refrigerators. The customer also made use of the Powerhouse Dynamics mobile app to capture the rest of their food safety data. In fact, the app helped them reduce the time of line checking from 18 minutes to less than two minutes to ensure food safety by tracking information across all equipment and activities.

Open Kitchen also helps monitor and control various types of equipment to streamline operations and reduce wear and tear by shutting them down at night or other times when they are not needed. Powerhouse Dynamics is continuously working to enhance its platform and its integration capabilities. Alongside food service and food retail, the company also plans to venture into food processing. Here again, the company will provide its integration capabilities to broadly strengthen its food safety abilities.