Plant floor data can get messy and overwhelming for food manufacturers. In today’s plant, instrumentation and sensor information can generate gigabytes of data every second. Industry 4.0 is still young, so food manufacturers are still figuring out how to combine data upgrades with continuous improvement (CI) programs. More plant floor data can be cumbersome, so how do manufacturers keep moving forward?

A recent webinar produced by CESMII, titled “Smart Manufacturing Mindset – Think Differently: Continuous Improvement,” offered real-world insights into this issue from Lisa Zasada, director of reliability and improvement at General Mills, Patrick Gaughan, partner at Axiom Manufacturing Systems, and James Ricci, managing director at AMBE Engineering, LLC. (*The transcript of this discussion has been lightly edited for clarity and brevity purposes)