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Digitalisation: key drivers explored

25 April 2024

Food Processing asked two automation vendors for their thoughts on digitalisation in the food and beverage manufacturing sector.

Q: What is the key driver for digitalisation in the food factory today?
Keith Thornhill, Head of Food and Beverage UK and Ireland at Siemens: The single biggest driver for digitalisation in food and drink manufacturing is cost reduction. That applies to both labour and physical resources, but it also goes hand-in-hand with the sustainability agenda. Cutting energy consumption and waste are both key green goals, and rising costs mean they are also primary targets.

Digitalisation is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in these areas by removing uncertainty from processes, with technology like machine-vision monitoring and digital twins providing unprecedented insights into the connections between different parts of the operation. This is allowing managers to understand where inefficiencies lie, and to make more precise adjustments in areas where previously there may have been wasteful over-compensation, such as setting freezers to unnecessarily low temperatures, to err on the side of caution.”

Tanya Bayley, Segment Marketing Manager – Food & Beverage, Schneider Electric: As with everything in the food production sector, it is largely driven by the needs of the consumer. Digitalisation in the food factory enables manufacturers to meet both cost and sustainability imperatives by leveraging data. Deploying a combination of intelligent hardware and industrial software enables agility, improving a manufacturer’s ability to meet the changing needs of the customer in the fast-moving and competitive market. Using real-time data; processes can be easily modified to introduce new products without having to create a whole new line, quality inspection is improved to reduce waste, and best practices are automatically recorded so it can be replicated across the facility. All these digital capabilities, whether included from the outset in a new plant or retroactively added to a legacy facility, will reduce waste and improve plant throughput, enabling a food manufacturer to effectively use each resource much closer to its optimum while supporting their decarbonisation journey. 

Q: Do you see any industry-specific challenges facing food processors/manufacturers when it comes to digitalising the plant floor? (and how do you think these can be overcome).
Keith: The food and beverage industry is naturally risk averse and many of the businesses like to own, rather than lease, their process equipment, increasing the up-front capital cost of implementing new technology. It’s also a relatively low-margin sector in many cases, and that means any new technology needs to demonstrate rapid return on investment if it is going to be viable. All of these factors can tend to slow down the rate of innovation.

There needs to be a vision for change that comes from leadership teams, and that kind of cultural shift takes time. Ultimately, businesses need solid evidence of the benefits digital transformation delivers. This will happen as companies begin to see their competitors making gains by implementing innovations, but there is also an onus on technology suppliers to show rather than tell potential clients what the short-term benefits are, to demonstrate in the real world what can be achieved.

Tanya: Food supply chains can be complex and any disruption can result in costly delays. Integrating a digitalisation platform that works across the network with the right levels of data integrity and security is not an easy undertaking. Opting for an interoperable shared digital environment that can be simply deployed at each link of the chain offers a flexible platform and the proof points for building the business case for the benefits of adoption. Manufacturers themselves use the visibility enabled by such open-architecture to assist with making better informed and strategic decisions to maximise profitability. When integrating manufacturing with warehouse, logistics, and retail, all stock information, ordering, and transport can be optimised in line with the production process. Once in place, an entire food supply chain can be effectively leveraging each resource while ensuring the delivery of the right product and the right time.  


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