June’s 2020 Food Engineering Plant Construction Survey revealed that the vast majority of processors are increasing production to meet demand. But demand today is a little different than it was in years gone by. Back then, consumers were happy with long-running brands, and there was relatively little variability in product choices. Today, consumers expect to choose from a wide choice of brands and products—not just from the “center” of the store, but fresh and organic products from the periphery of the store. Sometimes new products are short lived and are designed to be that way—because consumers’ choices turn on a dime. Automation can help processors turn products around faster by increasing production.

But increasing production is only part of the story. The larger part of the story is being able to adapt to produce new products in changing formats and packaging sizes. This demands a lot of flexibility, and one way to achieve this flexibility is through modularization. Modularization increases flexibility, but a process and its facility needs to be designed to be flexible through creating modular pieces of automation that can be easily moved in and out of a process.