Because of increasing consumer interest in a more diverse product selection, healthy foods, and more convenient meal preparation, food manufacturers in dairy, meat, baked goods and produce are supplying a widening array of new SKUs in both chilled and frozen formats. This places an ever increasing demand on cold storage, and with older facilities, it’s not very easy to automate them.

Industrial IoT technology gives food manufacturers and the food service industry real-time data to identify problems, reduce waste and prevent expensive, brand-damaging outbreaks and recalls.

Reliable weighing equipment is critical in the food industry. Accurate weighing helps achieve consistency and batch uniformity. Moreover, a reliable food weight machine helps in adhering to predefined process requirements.

It’s ironic that the Jeff Bezos, Amazon chief executive, who heads up one of the most cyber-secure cloud architectures in the world, had his own very private data hacked and used against him. But his sloppiness about personal security provides a warning message for us all. That is, we can build the most secure, impossible-to-hack network systems, but they can’t protect us from our own stupidity—sharing very personal data over systems that aren’t so private.

In food manufacturing, one of the most important challenges is ensuring complete hygiene at all steps in the process. For Minebea Intec, the subject of hygienic design has been the top priority for many years, a fact that continues to be apparent in the new systems introduced by the company.

In the last five years, augmented and virtual reality technologies have been making steady inroads to the manufacturing world, especially in finding useful applications in maintenance. Today, IIoT and Industry 4.0 technologies play an ever expanding role in maintenance.

Heineken Vietnam is a major beer producer in the Vietnamese domestic market, but it needed to increase its production significantly at its Tien Giang site in the south of Vietnam. The challenge: The brewer needed a quick, turnkey installation of a new canning line without upsetting existing operations.

PSSI, which sends in its teams to clean and sanitize many top food facilities, has made changes to reinforce how it helps protect the food supply.

Meat processors who brushed up on the latest labeling guidelines at the International Production & Processing Expo learned details about when bioengineered logos might be needed and how FDA’s nutritional panel updates might trickle over to their products.