McCain says the program gives its teams and potato growers a shared, consistent view of crop performance throughout the season, using data-driven insights to help identify variability earlier and prioritize attention where it matters most.
As product portfolios expand and production requirements become increasingly complex, manufacturers are under growing pressure to maintain efficiency with systems originally designed for predictable, repetitive production.
You know the origins of all your ingredients and everything that happened during the processing, cooling and freezing of your product, but what can you know about your product once it leaves your premises? This is the job of the track part of track-and-trace.
Food and beverage plants require predictive, remote and machine-embedded tools on packaging machinery to ensure uptime, but operator shadowing and hands-on repetition are equally important for operational efficiency.
Two F&B manufacturers uncovered seven figures of recoverable loss by connecting dots with digital data.
June 4, 2026
Food and beverage plants often face hidden losses marked by discrepancies in yield, giveaway, and mass balance. While OEE measures capacity usage, it doesn’t provide insights into product quantity or waste, which can be revealed by analyzing quality data effectively.
Artificial intelligence is being applied in industrial controls, but manufacturers need to know where their data is processed and who has access to it.
Ever notice how ChatGPT or CoPilot saves all your AI chats? While this can help solve future problems more quickly, private data accumulated from an OT system saved on the public internet is a disaster waiting to happen. Fortunately, in most cases AI is embedded in the process and data stays private and protected.
In an era where visibility and agility are becoming more essential, many food and beverage manufacturers are moving toward enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions that help create a single system of record.
Smart manufacturing technologies, such as digital tools and connected systems, can improve visibility, performance and decision-making on packaging lines.
3D printing, while serving roles in package design, tools and spare parts, is finding applications for creating unique foods that aren’t practical for conventional methods.
Additive manufacturing can describe two technologies in food production — the more commonly known is 3D printing, which has been borrowed from 3D tool and parts making, but robotic work cells can also fit the definition of additive manufacturing.
Digital recorders and data management software ease recordkeeping and regulatory compliance — compared to traditional paper-based methods — increasing consumer safety and enhancing operational efficiency for processors.