How the IIoT Will Help Food & Beverage Companies
Navigate a Changing Regulatory Environment
By Jason Andersen, VP of Business Line Management, Stratus Technologies
When Congress passed the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), it ushered in sweeping
reforms aimed at proactively preventing
safety threats to the food supply, rather
than simply responding to them.
Food manufacturers must now ensure
they are producing according to Good
Manufacturing Practices (GMP), with
traceability of all source materials,
and manufacturing, packaging and
labeling processes that align with
master documentation. The other critical
compliance imperative for manufacturers
is robust hazards analysis at critical
control points, performing quality checks
throughout the supply chain — from
sourcing to manufacturing to distribution.
Pressure is also coming from the
marketplace itself. Health-conscious
consumers are increasingly focused on
food safety and accountability. They
want to know what is in their food —
including genetically modified organisms
(GMOs) — where it comes from and how
it was produced.
Meanwhile, to remain competitive, food
manufacturers must squeeze every ounce
of speed, efficiency and responsiveness
from their global supply chain. And they
must achieve it without compromising
food safety.
Creating the Intelligent
Enterprise
To meet this challenge, manufacturers
must modernize their automation systems
and IT infrastructures. Forward-looking
enterprises are viewing this as an
opportunity to create a more “intelligent”
supply chain and automation environment.
And that means leveraging the Industrial
Internet of Things (IIo T).
The power of the IIo T comes from its
combination of connectedness, intelligence
and speed. It is about connecting devices
throughout the supply chain and production
process to collect and interconnect
operational data, which can be organized
and rapidly analyzed to enable a range of
powerful capabilities — including real-time
process optimization.
As a society, we’re already familiar
with the power of the Internet of Things
(Io T) from a consumer’s standpoint
as more and more devices become
connected to make our lives easier. For
example, consumers can now purchase
refrigerators with IoT capabilities that
enable them to view their home food
“inventory” from anywhere via their
smartphone. This connectivity can be
extended to their grocery retailer, which
in turn is integrated with food suppliers
and manufacturers. In this way, consumer
demand can be monitored and analyzed
in near real-time, giving parties at every
step in the supply chain new insight that
can transform their efficiency. Integrating
this information with production planning
and automation systems enables a
truly intelligent enterprise that makes
production and inventory decisions
dynamically, with little or no human
intervention.
Real-Time, In-Line Quality
Analysis
Likewise, the IIoT can play a critical
role in helping help food manufacturers
meet their regulatory challenges.
Currently, hazard analysis is performed
by manually collecting sample lots and
sending them to the lab for analysis.
Moving forward, we are likely to see
more automated, in-line analysis.
Samples are tested at the edge in real-time using chemical and spectroscopic
analysis, with data made immediately
available to centralized quality systems
via the IIo T.
This real-time analysis enables
manufacturers to identify potential
problems much earlier, allowing them to
make adjustments and “nip them in the
bud.” This dramatically reduces the waste
