Advanced control solutions enable processors to satisfy regulatory demands while gaining a competitive edge.

Last year was full of all sorts of bad news from the FDA: product recalls due to E. coli, Salmonella and other nasty pathogens; problems with allergen contaminations; and labels that failed to list potential allergens, missed some ingredients altogether or promised certain levels of vitamins or minerals that simply weren’t up to the level specified on the label. While these problems screamed for attention, consumers continued to demand more creative, tantalizing foods and drinks. Food engineers had to meet these challenges with fewer resources, while tracking the ingredients used, the processing steps taken and the customers who ordered the products.

Meeting these demands by manually recording data from various “islands of automation” is becoming more and more difficult. As governing bodies increase the information they want and decrease the time allotted to procure it, manual methods will no longer cut it. It’s time to start thinking about plant-wide advanced process control.