Food Engineering logo
  • Sign In
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
  • NEWS
  • PRODUCTS
  • TOPICS
  • EXCLUSIVES
  • MEDIA
  • FOOD MASTER
  • EVENTS
  • RESOURCES
  • EMAGAZINE
  • SIGN UP!
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • NEWS
  • Latest Headlines
  • Manufacturing News
  • People & Industry News
  • Plant Openings
  • Recalls
  • Regulatory Watch
  • Supplier News
  • PRODUCTS
  • New Plant Products
  • New Retail Products
  • TOPICS
  • Alternative Protein
  • Automation
  • Cannabis
  • Cleaning | Sanitation
  • Fabulous Food Plants
  • Food Safety
  • Maintenance Strategies
  • OEE
  • Packaging
  • Sustainability
  • More
  • EXCLUSIVES
  • Plant Construction Survey
  • Plant of the Year
  • Sustainable Plant of the Year
  • State of Food Manufacturing
  • Top 100 Food & Beverage Companies
  • MEDIA
  • Podcasts
  • Videos
  • Webinars
  • White Papers
  • EVENTS
  • Food Automation & Manufacturing Symposium and Expo
  • Industry Events
  • RESOURCES
  • eNewsletter
  • Custom Content & Marketing Services
  • FE Store
  • Government Links
  • Industry Associations
  • Market Research
  • Classified Ads
  • EMAGAZINE
  • eMagazine
  • Archive Issue
  • Advertise
Food Engineering logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • Sign In
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Food Engineering logo
  • NEWS
    • Latest Headlines
    • Manufacturing News
    • People & Industry News
    • Plant Openings
    • Recalls
    • Regulatory Watch
    • Supplier News
  • PRODUCTS
    • New Plant Products
    • New Retail Products
  • TOPICS
    • Alternative Protein
    • Automation
    • Cannabis
    • Cleaning | Sanitation
    • Fabulous Food Plants
    • Food Safety
    • Maintenance Strategies
    • OEE
    • Packaging
    • Sustainability
    • More
  • EXCLUSIVES
    • Plant Construction Survey
    • Plant of the Year
    • Sustainable Plant of the Year
    • State of Food Manufacturing
    • Top 100 Food & Beverage Companies
  • MEDIA
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • FOOD MASTER
  • EVENTS
    • Food Automation & Manufacturing Symposium and Expo
    • Industry Events
  • RESOURCES
    • eNewsletter
    • Custom Content & Marketing Services
    • FE Store
    • Government Links
    • Industry Associations
    • Market Research
    • Classified Ads
  • EMAGAZINE
    • eMagazine
    • Archive Issue
    • Advertise
  • SIGN UP!

Supply chains

What the COVID-19 pandemic can teach us about the internet

Supply chains used to survive without the internet, but could they now?

By Wayne Labs, Senior Contributing Technical Editor
COVID-19 and the internet
While COVID-19 has disrupted worldwide supply chains, could internet and/or power grid failure take us back to 18th century travel and shipping? (Image sources: U.S. Library of Congress and Centers for Disease Control)
June 19, 2020

When I was an electrical engineer building emergency wireless communications networks, I learned about the importance of having backups—sometimes the hard way, with a 3 a.m. phone call reporting a system is down and the backup system didn’t kick in.

I also learned never to rely on a sole-source supplier, because if for some reason that company couldn't deliver, you can’t build a product or make something work if it’s broken and you don’t have the parts to fix it. Have you ever had an ingredient supplier like that? Then you know what I’m talking about.

When I was a kid, supply chains used to be simpler and shorter (most likely attributable to transportation or the lack of long-distance, timely refrigerated service). Our poultry farm was 30 miles north of Center City Philadelphia, along with numerous other local dairy/beef and hog farms, supplied produce, eggs, milk, poultry, beef and pork products to local and city markets. In fact, the town where I live (whose population was well under 5,000 at the time) had a poultry slaughterhouse and two dairy facilities—now, of course, they’re gone, and we’re part of the New York-to-Philadelphia megalopolis.

There was no internet or smartphones then. So these local food supply chains depended on hard-wired telephone connections (and later, faxes) for farmers, meat packers, wholesalers and retailers to conduct their business. If phones went out of service, your supplier or customer was often an easy drive away.

Today, refrigerated truck, rail, air and ship transportation has extended the geographical boundaries of our supply chains such that they are literally without state or country borders. With the internet and instant communications from and to anywhere in the world, supply chains have grown more complex and more dependent upon technology. On the East Coast, you can get your grass-fed steak from the West Coast and get it on the same day—or an Apple technology product can be drop-shipped from the manufacturer’s stock in China when it’s not available here.


Eggs in one basket

What does this have to do with COVID-19, sole source suppliers, the internet and supply chains? First, COVID-19 has served as a good stress test for our food and beverage supply chains. When a number of employees are out sick at either at a slaughter plant or a further processing site, the facility grinds to a halt, and the facility is incapable of accepting input from its suppliers; therefore, nothing goes out the door.

Likewise, with everyone home, “eating in” and ordering online, another unanticipated blip occurred in our national supply chains. Food service and closed restaurants were no longer ordering products, but retail couldn’t get enough products from its suppliers to meet the increased demand. Why? Either products were not available or in the wrong place (warehouse)—in spite of the instant communications we have today.

Second, whether or not you agree with the ethical/ecological impact of mega-scale animal farms and slaughterhouses, you nevertheless have to ask, does this system work when there is a break in the supply chain—due to COVID-19, extreme weather, terrorism or internet/utility outages? Is the current system resilient or is it fragile? Could smaller, distributed, and more regional supply chains help?

Has the current supply chain become too complex to work efficiently? In a Webinar, Willy Shih, Harvard Business School Professor, suggested it took COVID-19 to reveal some of this complexity, and offered several practical suggestions toward making some repairs to our food supply chain.

A more scary thought comes from another webinar I watched, one questioning our ability to be ready for a major utility outage where everything fails—because the electrical power grid has become incapacitated. Without power, there is no internet, phone, city water and sewage, refrigeration systems—anything else that depends on electricity.

What are potential causes of power grid failure? Solar storms, local utility interruption causing a domino effect that causes a major regional blackout, terrorism/cyberattacks or even a war—where an adversary detonates an atomic weapon well above our atmosphere, causing an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) capable of shutting down the power grid and frying the microprocessors in every piece of electronic equipment we use—including phones, computers, cars, trucks, aircraft, trains, ships and any IIoT/IoT connected device. While everyone on the ground survives, and there is no radiation poisoning, we are plunged back to an 18th century lifestyle—only without 18th century “technology”—horses, wagons, aqueducts, etc.


Life without the internet

While hopefully we will not be victims of an EMP, state actors and criminals constantly attempt to shut down the U.S. internet and power grids. Though TCP/IP was cleverly designed to be self-healing and re-routing when communications paths/circuits fail, key router failures due to malicious actors could still bring down major portions of the internet until they are bought back online. Regional outages have already occurred.

Today, we depend on the internet as a sole-source supplier for our communications—doesn’t matter whether you use Verizon, Comcast, or some other provider. At the same time, as I already said, there are malevolent actors working to shut it down using whatever method works. We’ve already seen what has happened with partial internet outages: banking system failures, news sites down, popular mail-order/commerce sites not working, governmental sites out of service, and the list goes on.

It’s probably not a matter of “if” the internet goes down, but when. Are we prepared? How well will your supply chain function without the internet? What about your cloud-based process control system? Since the internet powers so many of our phone systems (VOIP), you have to ask if we are prepared for phone outages? While your fiber optic cable may be physically working, without connection to the internet via your carrier’s gateway, you’re dead in the water.

I don’t mean to be an alarmist. We were supposedly prepared for a pandemic, but then we were unprepared in ways we didn’t consider. While we have both government and private corporations working together around the clock to keep the internet up and running, are we really prepared for a long-term, potentially country- or world-wide outage?

KEYWORDS: readiness Supply Chain

Share This Story

Looking for a reprint of this article?
From high-res PDFs to custom plaques, order your copy today!

Wayne labs 200px
Wayne Labs has more than 30 years of editorial experience in industrial automation. He served as senior technical editor for I&CS/Control Solutions magazine for 18 years where he covered software, control system hardware and sensors/transmitters. Labs ran his own consulting business and contributed feature articles to Electronic Design, Control, Control Design, Industrial Networking and Food Engineering magazines. Before joining Food Engineering, he served as a senior technical editor for Omega Engineering Inc. Labs also worked in wireless systems and served as a field engineer for GE’s Mobile Communications Division and as a systems engineer for Bucks County Emergency Services. In addition to writing technical feature articles, Wayne covers FE’s Engineering R&D section.

Recommended Content

JOIN TODAY
to unlock your recommendations.

Already have an account? Sign In

  • Global Organic Food & Beverage Market to Grow

    Global Organic Food & Beverage Market to Grow

    With a CAGR of 12.07%, Bonafide Research estimates this...
    Latest headlines
  • skilled MEP worker

    Predicting Food and Beverage Manufacturing Trends for 2024

    The two words that should be kept in mind are labor and...
    Automation
    By: Derrick Teal
  • cleaning and sanitation

    The basics of cleaning and sanitation in food plants

    Sanitation maintains or restores a state of cleanliness...
    Food Safety
    By: Richard F. Stier
Subscribe For Free!
  • eMagazine
  • eNewsletter
  • Online Registration
  • Manage My Preferences
  • Customer Service

OT Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities in Food Manufacturing Facilities

OT Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities in Food Manufacturing Facilities

Understanding Impacts of OT Cybersecurity Events in Food Manufacturing

Understanding Impacts of OT Cybersecurity Events in Food Manufacturing

Food Plant Openings and Expansions April 2025

Food Plant Openings and Expansions April 2025

FA&M 2025 in Rewind

FA&M 2025 in Rewind

More Videos

Popular Stories

Conagra Logo

Conagra Brands to Sell Chef Boyardee Brand to Hometown Food Company

Salt

FDA to Amend Standards of Identity to Include Salt Substitutes

Vilter IHP in plant

Industrial Heat Pumps: Sustainable Energy Solutions for Now and the Future

CHECK OUT OUR NEW ESSENTIAL TOPICS

Alternative ProteinAutomationCleaning/SanitationFabulous Food Plants

Food SafetyMaintenance StrategiesOEE

PackagingSustainability

Events

June 5, 2025

Mass Customization Driving Innovation in the Food and Beverage Industry

The food and beverage industry is at the nexus of transformative global manufacturing trends, driving a shift toward personalized, customer-centric solutions. 

June 5, 2025

How Cafe Spice Uses Automation to Propel Private Label

Learn about Cafe Spice’s new, state-of-the-art, highly automated manufacturing facility in Beacon, New York. 

View All Submit An Event

Products

Recent Advances in Ready-to-Eat Food Technology

Recent Advances in Ready-to-Eat Food Technology

See More Products

Plant of the Year

Related Articles

  • CSR test

    What the auto industry can teach food makers about seals

    See More
  • COVID-19

    COVID-19 has provided automation suppliers with the expertise to help food processors survive the pandemic

    See More
  • This robot stacks pallets away from people

    Robotics service and maintenance during the COVID-19 pandemic

    See More

Events

View AllSubmit An Event
  • September 19, 2024

    Analyzing the Factors Influencing the Top 100 Food and Beverage Companies

    On Demand Join the editorial staff from FOOD ENGINEERING and Refrigerated & Frozen Foods as they break down the 2024 Top 100 Food and Beverage Companies and discuss the factors affecting this year’s rankings.
  • November 19, 2024

    How the Food Industry Uses Dock Scheduling to Reduce Costs

    On Demand Join us in this exclusive webinar as we delve into how shippers in the food industry are using dock scheduling software to improve their supply chain operations.
View AllSubmit An Event
×

Elevate your expertise in food engineering with unparalleled insights and connections.

Get the latest industry updates tailored your way.

JOIN TODAY!
  • RESOURCES
    • Advertise
    • Contact Us
    • Food Master
    • Store
    • Want More
  • SIGN UP TODAY
    • Create Account
    • eMagazine
    • eNewsletter
    • Customer Service
    • Manage Preferences
  • SERVICES
    • Marketing Services
    • Reprints
    • Market Research
    • List Rental
    • Survey/Respondent Access
  • STAY CONNECTED
    • LinkedIn
    • Facebook
    • YouTube
    • X (Twitter)
  • PRIVACY
    • PRIVACY POLICY
    • TERMS & CONDITIONS
    • DO NOT SELL MY PERSONAL INFORMATION
    • PRIVACY REQUEST
    • ACCESSIBILITY

Copyright ©2025. All Rights Reserved BNP Media.

Design, CMS, Hosting & Web Development :: ePublishing

Food Engineering logo
search
cart
facebook twitter linkedin youtube
  • Sign In
  • Create Account
  • Sign Out
  • My Account
Food Engineering logo
  • NEWS
    • Latest Headlines
    • Manufacturing News
    • People & Industry News
    • Plant Openings
    • Recalls
    • Regulatory Watch
    • Supplier News
  • PRODUCTS
    • New Plant Products
    • New Retail Products
  • TOPICS
    • Alternative Protein
    • Automation
    • Cannabis
    • Cleaning | Sanitation
    • Fabulous Food Plants
    • Food Safety
    • Maintenance Strategies
    • OEE
    • Packaging
    • Sustainability
    • More
  • EXCLUSIVES
    • Plant Construction Survey
    • Plant of the Year
    • Sustainable Plant of the Year
    • State of Food Manufacturing
    • Top 100 Food & Beverage Companies
  • MEDIA
    • Podcasts
    • Videos
    • Webinars
    • White Papers
  • FOOD MASTER
  • EVENTS
    • Food Automation & Manufacturing Symposium and Expo
    • Industry Events
  • RESOURCES
    • eNewsletter
    • Custom Content & Marketing Services
    • FE Store
    • Government Links
    • Industry Associations
    • Market Research
    • Classified Ads
  • EMAGAZINE
    • eMagazine
    • Archive Issue
    • Advertise
  • SIGN UP!