Martin’s Famous Pastry Shoppe Inc. finds the summer season really good for business—except mostly manual practices in the warehouse put a real crimp on the way the company would really like to handle the distribution side of its supply chain.

As consumers demand greater convenience, e-commerce sales continue to rise. According to the 2019 Internet Retailer Top 1000 Report, consumers spent $517.36 billion online with U.S. merchants in 2018, up from $449.88 billion spent the year prior. Even when the final sales takes place in a store rather than online, the first step to most purchase decisions starts at the search bar.

Unless steps are taken to identify, reduce, or eliminate the causes of corrosion, batch retorts may have their service lives cut short, resulting in production disruptions and the need for early replacement of affected vessels.

Food and beverage manufacturers must be able to respond quickly and effectively to the recall of products deemed unsafe for the market, as the consequences for not doing so can have effects both legally and financially.

While not all processors have machine shops with CNCs in their plants, most food and beverage plants do have process and packaging equipment that would benefit from smarter maintenance.