According to some industry experts, food producers need to play catch up.
A couple decades ago, many manufacturing plants-especially in the automotive industry-complained that automation cells couldn't "talk" to one another. Each cell was efficient in what it did, but there was no way to communicate its internal data to the shop floor or to management. In response, GM launched a concerted first effort using manufacturing automation protocol (MAP) networks to connect "islands of automation" and resolve the plant-to-enterprise communications gap.