Think back 20 years or so, and the average food plant typically had little automation, and whatever it did have was likely to exist in islands of automation.

There were many point-source solutions, such as HMIs, machine controllers, historians, data acquisition systems, statistical process control (SPC) software, laboratory information management systems (LIMS), shop floor systems and, of course, the ubiquitous spreadsheet. Believe it or not, according to one of the software experts interviewed for this article, more than half of U.S. food and beverage manufacturers are still using spreadsheets for one application or more.