Industrial Automation Blog

By Wayne Labs

Many large food and beverage manufacturers have their own engineering staffs, which provide system integration and automation services to their various facilities. However, most medium- and small-sized processors often don’t have these capabilities—and may have just a single plant engineer.

Therefore, for any number of reasons, a food processor may need to look for a system integrator (SI) to help with its automation strategy, whether to update aging and existing automation systems or plan new automation strategies that could require complete revamps or new facilities. First, we look at the basics in choosing a system integrator, and second, we look at the ways a food processor can work with a SI to plan a successful automation strategy.

A Marriage Made in Heaven?

Well, maybe not so much, but unlike locating and calling a plumber who has Saturday hours solely to fix a leaking pipe, finding and choosing a system integrator should result in a long-term ...

By Dan Pan Demetrakakes, Senior Editor, Food Processing

Automation could, in theory, solve many of the food and beverage industry’s problems.

So why doesn’t that happen more often?

It’s clear that various forms of automation should be able to help with many of the challenges, both eternal and relatively recent, that the industry faces, such as staffing adequately, maintaining quality and safety, keeping product moving out the door, and satisfying demands for SKU variety. But food as an industrial sector has historically lagged in adopting automation, and that situation shows no sign of abating.

Experts consulted by Food Processing identified a variety of factors that may be slowing down adoption of automation, such as the nature of food and beverage production and the expense and uncertainty of both hardware and software. But they add that overcoming these concerns is both inevitable and vital.

“Automation is really the long-term investment ...