By Steve Mulder, North America packaging segment lead, and Damon Sepe, North America process segment lead, Rockwell Automation
Smart machines and equipment can play a key role in helping food and beverage producers overcome the many obstacles and demands that come with satisfying changing consumer preferences. A smart machine — which generally means one that’s leveraging data and information to improve performance — can bring unprecedented flexibility, increased productivity and cutting-edge efficiency to the plant floor.
Despite this potential, adoption of smart machines by food and beverage companies has been gradual, at best. Gartner, Inc., estimates that smart machines will enter mainstream adoption by 2021, with 30% adoption by large companies.
Leaders at food and beverage companies, understandably, have questions about how these intelligent technologies can fit into their operations. Their OEM partners can help answer those questions for end users. Three factors food and beverage company leaders should ask about include:
- Flexibility.
- Data and Information.
- Security and Protection.
Flexibility
Smart machines and equipment offer a new era of flexible production, which is especially important for food and beverage companies, because consumers want choices. Consider the proliferation of options in packaged snacks. Chips and crackers no longer are just available in family size. Consumers have their pick from snack packages to large cartons, with more options in between.