Food Engineering's second annual automation conference covers project justification and management, case-histories of successful projects, and integration of the plant floor with MES, ERP and the supply chain.
Ninety-three food engineers from 45 food-manufacturing companies and 29 partner engineering firms convened Feb. 4-7 at Fort Lauderdale, Fla. for Food Automation 2001, Food Engineering's second annual conference addressing automation issues in food manufacturing. An additional 17 vendor representatives demonstrated hardware and software solutions for food-manufacturing applications at the concurrent Automation Expo. Attendees toured the National Deli, Inc. plant, a unit of ConAgra, where plant manager Steve Conrad discussed his plan for tripling plant capacity in existing space at no capital cost by re-engineering automated equipment.
Engineers and operations executives from food-manufacturing companies, together at some sessions with their systems integrators, shared experiences in automating their processes or integrating the plant floor with information systems. Conference highlights follow.