At Worximity, as the leading provider of IoT hardware and software for the food and beverage industry, we’re constantly looking at how companies are incorporating industry 4.0 into their production and driving the future of the food industry. An article last year by Automation World interviewed numerous businesses on how they are using IoT to vastly increase their productivity. Here are some of our takeaways:
Top-down Integration
Companies like SugarCreek, which sell raw and cooked meat products maximize production gains by implementing IoT on every level. Everything is tracked to optimize yields from the temperature of the cooked meat to the position of bacon entering the slicer to the cooling inside the delivery trucks. Even workers might soon be tracked by RFID tags to maximize safety!
Solving Inefficiencies on the Go
In the old way of monitoring machines, workers on the floor weren’t likely to know about production problems, and then every machined was siloed off from the next. The future of the food industry will be driven by Introducing IoT to the business, which allows all operators to know when and where an inefficiency occurs, and quickly fix the issue from clear precise data.
Data, Data Everywhere
For companies delivering fresh produce, sensors on the road are able to track the temperature in the truck and the ripeness of the product. Where once sensors were prohibitively expensive, great leaps in OT and IT have made it easy to collect data from everywhere along the supply route. This allows for advanced modeling which in turn drives the continuous improvement made possible by IoT.
If It Ain’t Broke, Know When to Fix It
While sensors are great for monitoring product and efficiency, they’re also great for watching the machines themselves! Embedded sensors can tell when a machine is losing efficiency and going to need maintenance, allowing factories to minimize downtime. The same principle applies to the supply chain, where the sensor will be able to tell if vibrations and jostling or damaging important refrigeration units.
If you want to learn more about amazing ways IoT is revolutionizing food and beverage manufacturing the find the full article here.
