Food manufacturing is an important sector of the world’s economy and automation software plays a big part in the food supply chain. With Industry 4.0, manufacturing and processing come hand in hand in the food and beverage industry, and a suitable, robust, and reliable automation software is the key to effective and efficient manufacturing.
According to Mckinsey & Company, the food and beverage industry saw unprecedented growth, with industry sales up 12% in 2020. With the pandemic waves, people are finding their way to more food stocks and refilling their kitchen cabinets in fear of resource scarcity, inflation, and recession.
This holds food and beverage manufacturers accountable for the expected supple amount of stocks and production lines. How would companies in the industry overcome this food insecurity challenge? The key is in management and system.
This is a special occurrence and requires special attention. Some major challenges that food companies are facing include but are not limited to supply chains and labor challenges. At some point, it became absolutely clear that the food manufacturing industry would have to adopt new technologies in order to keep up with the new trends and development speed of the manufacturing industry as a whole.
Two main factors that made companies unbearably inept to changes and upgrades are COST and lack of KNOWLEDGE.
Implementation of new technologies is a long-term investment and requires a proper calculation to analyze feasibility, market inventory, and ROI prediction. To see the real financial potential for your plan, you’ll also have to procure the right experts and human resources with in-depth experience and a clear modern vision. This won’t happen overnight.
During the pandemic, the survival dilemma points down: TO CHANGE OR TO LEAVE.
The result? The food and beverage industry faced a drastic and significant change: food and consumer manufacturers increased their robotics and automation orders by 56% over the year in 2020.
The conclusion remains: implementing software automation with robotic technologies in plants and factories is beneficial, and ultimately, the only path to survival.
The benefits are considered to be as follows:
- Enchanted traceability
- Increased flexibility, efficiency, and agility
- Standardized quality control and increased reputation & retention
- Better compliance and workplace safety improvement
- Cost, time, and waste efficient
- Reduces intensive human labor
- Less training and high-knowledge specialist are required on-site
- And many more…
Realising an intelligent automation system and devices with calculatable expenses and high market acceptance may be hard but the best way to transition with a seamless process is by connecting with device manufacturers such as CODESYS to benefit from the extensive features with easy adaption to different system requirements and environments.
CODESYS is the leading manufacturer-independent IEC 61131-3 automation software for engineering control systems, offering various intelligent components for manufacturing needs.
In addition, work with popular Fieldbus systems, I/O modules, or drives (e.g. for CANopen, EtherCAT, or PROFINET) that have integrated functions for practice-oriented automation devices.
With complete IEC 61131-3 programming system – from classic PLC programming to object-oriented controller programming, everything is integrated into a single user interface, creating simple and sophisticated automation applications for industrial controllers that are used in factories, mobile machines, power and building automation systems, as well as many other areas.
By implementing automated systems in a manufacturing plant, monotonous, repetitive, and dangerous tasks which may include cutting, mixing, lifting heavy items, and processing may be eliminated, reducing hard labor cost and increasing productivity, speed efficiency, and streamlining both primary and secondary packaging area.
With the right integrated system and real-time software solution, operation cost and delivery time will also decrease while production quality and quantity increase.
To learn more about what we do in partnership with CODESYS in regards to engineering, runtime, visualization, motion CNC robotics, Fieldbus, safety, and how we can help your process automation requirements, please click projects, products & services.
Ti2 is currently very focused on working with its global partners to secure stock and avoid long delay times in delivering products to their customers. Together with our trusted partners, we are here to provide solutions for your needs.
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Article inspired from CODESYS, marlen, automate, conceptsystem, robotiq, and IFT.
