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Food Automation and Manufacturing Conference 2015

Rising to the challenges

Presenters at FA&M stressed innovation and flexibility as key strategies for processors to obtain operational excellence.

Debra Schug

June 26, 2015

The week after Food Engineering’s Food Automation & Manufacturing Conference and Expo, Kraft announced the iconic bright orange color of its Macaroni & Cheese sauce will be discontinued.

Plant Construction Survey

38th Annual Plant Construction Survey: Fast track project delivery

There’s more money available, but it’s already earmarked for automation, sanitation, operational efficiency, utilities—and sometimes a new facility.

Wayne Labs

June 11, 2015

No question about it, the numbers of reportable food and beverage projects in 2014 hit a nine-year high—a total of 635 compared to 555 in 2013, according to Food Engineering’s 38th Annual Plant Construction Survey.

TECH FLASH

Four-to-one combiner saves space, money

For a packaged snack food manufacturer, a multi-lane tabletop conveyor system using four-to-one merge for cartons was the right solution.

Jeremy Gerrard

May 26, 2015

Four lanes of pneumatically actuated clamping devices and blade stops control the traffic of four rows of product and merge them to one lane for delivery to a palletizing system.

TECH FLASH

MCAA publishes annual market forecast

The report covers 12 industry segments and product categories of the process instrumentation and automation industry (PI&A) for the US and Canada.

Jeremy Gerrard

May 26, 2015

The five-year forecast predicts a healthy compound annual growth rate, with increased spending in the food and beverage industry.

Key Performance Indicators

Effective tools for hitting manufacturing targets

KPIs and measures serve to crystallize business strategy, align the organization and clarify accountability. The people, the measures, the accountability, the review and response process and the actions taken are the greater drivers of strategy delivery.

Peter Hock

May 11, 2015

When deciding what kind of car to buy, there’s an old adage: Fast, cheap and good—pick two!

TECH FLASH

New module allows off-chassis data collection

Rockwell Automation debuted is FactoryTalk Historian Machine Edition v3.5 this month.

Jeremy Gerrard

April 28, 2015

The new module allows a single unit to collect up to 2,500 data points from five local and five remote controllers.

TECH FLASH

OPC announces “OPC UA open shared source” strategy

The foundation opens the doors to facilitate increased adoption of OPC Unified Architecture technology beyond industrial automation.

April 28, 2015

OPC Foundation’s vision of interoperability providing the best specifications, technology, certification and process is the core of this open shared source strategy.

TECH FLASH

Sercos logs international growth in 2014

The company’s membership increased by approximately 30 percent last year.

Jeremy Gerrard

March 30, 2015

Significant growth occurred in Asia and Europe.

TECH FLASH

New study on virtualization in IACS environments

The Automation Federation report examines the use of virtualization in industrial automation and control system environments.

Jeremy Gerrard

March 30, 2015

Researchers evaluated and tested current automation system vendor practices to generate guidelines and best practice references.

Reducing Packaging Line Bottlenecks

When automation is not enough

Debra Schug

March 6, 2015

While watching a packaging line operating smoothly, the quote attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle might come to mind, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.”

On Demand Kelley Rodriguez, Editor in Chief of Refrigerated & Frozen Foods, will be joined in this 60-minute webinar by industry experts to help unpack the latest research.

On Demand Driven by climate goals, business risk, client interest, and resilience considerations, food and beverage companies are increasingly turning their attention to decarbonizing their production processes.