What is
Smart Food Manufacturing
and how can it help?
Smart Food Manufacturing is a comprehensive approach to data collection and decision-making utilizing MES Integration, ERP Selection, Data Acquisition System Design, and Production Capacity Modeling. Looking at these solutions in a holistic way can optimize both daily and long-term operations.
Quickly and accurately gathering data is a necessity in the current competitive food environment. Multi-faceted solutions are a must to achieve that. And getting that done is how our team can help.
Food and beverage manufacturers can often struggle with poorly optimized decision-making regarding important process decisions. Due to a lack of accurate information, decisions are made based on tribal knowledge, with the capacity to make those decisions tied up in the brains of the people who have been there the longest.
Manufacturing
Execution System (MES)
Using a Manufacturing Execution System (MES) to collect and display process data in real-time, can optimize the plant-floor decision-making process, allowing for useful analysis of historical operation data, and enforcing quality control.
These systems are low cost, relatively simple to integrate, and are the first step in wider inter-connected automation schemes. Our team can help you select the right MES software provider and integrate that tool into your operations.
Enterprise
Resource Planning (ERP)
Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software tools allow food and beverage manufacturers to digitally manage every aspect of their business through a single access point. Manufacturing operations, inventory management, customer relations, finance, and accounting are all centralized on a single, cloud-based system.
ERPs are a huge help to food manufacturers from an inventory and traceability perspective. The increased processing power allows for more exact lot management, which reduces the size of potential recalls, mitigating risk. We have a deep network and resources that allow us to help food and beverage companies through this selection process step-by-step saving our partners tie and money.
In order to maximize the effectiveness of any smart manufacturing system, rapid and accurate data collection is crucial. Historically in food and beverage manufacturing, there has been a tradeoff between rapidity and accuracy. However, modern sensor tech allows for significantly improved performance and reduced footprint, which can go a long way in supporting facility-wide automation initiatives.
Data Acquisition
System Design
A Data Acquisition System Design will help. Our team can also work with you to determine where sensors are necessary, procure the proper hardware, and support the integration process.
When using Production Capacity Modeling in order to be able to maximize production output through proper scheduling, it’s important to understand what the true capacity of your food processing operation is.
This can be challenging, especially for small to midsize manufacturers, without any sort of automated data collection in place. However, even without those systems our organization can come in and analyze your production operation model mathematically, and provide you with capacity estimates and utilization rates with 5% accuracy, which can all be updated to incorporate process changes over time.