Increasing production speed while keeping rejects low and quality consistent—and maintaining food safety—is the goal of every food and beverage processor. Today, many food processors look toward automation to provide the solutions needed to attain the necessary throughput to be competitive.

We in the trade press have been extolling the virtues of automation for a long time, and you’re probably sick of hearing us ramble on about it. Nevertheless, if there were any other reason to take a hard look at implementing automation—at least partially—in your facility, it would be now. COVID-19 has certainly created some practical problems: Short-staff due to people at home sick with coronavirus, social distancing impossible on cutting/protein lines, changeover time killing production output…and the list goes on.

A program to manage foreign materials must go beyond the equipment.

If you have old equipment, there is hope that you can keep what works and modernize it by pulling worthwhile information from it with instrumentation and controls.