Wayne Labs has more than 30 years of editorial experience in industrial automation. He served as senior technical editor for I&CS/Control Solutions magazine for 18 years where he covered software, control system hardware and sensors/transmitters. Labs ran his own consulting business and contributed feature articles to Electronic Design, Control, Control Design, Industrial Networking and Food Engineering magazines. Before joining Food Engineering, he served as a senior technical editor for Omega Engineering Inc. Labs also worked in wireless systems and served as a field engineer for GE’s Mobile Communications Division and as a systems engineer for Bucks County Emergency Services. In addition to writing technical feature articles, Wayne covers FE’s Engineering R&D section.
Unless your facility is a USDA shop, then it most likely falls under FSMA regulations, which for the vast majority of processors is the law of the land. If you haven’t yet been visited by FDA for an audit, it is past time to get ready for that inevitable moment. I asked Ib Elandaloussi (CAL), Food and Consumer Products Group with Burns and McDonnell to talk briefly about designing facility solutions to meet FSMA rules.
A new, portable contaminant detector—now in trials by food processors and supply chain participants—promises to make testing for unwanted chemical constituents much faster and easier, truly "on the spot."
The U.S. Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is requesting information on a possible update to the Control of Hazardous Energy (Lockout/Tagout (LOTO)) standard. The Agency is interested in comments on the use of control circuit-type devices to isolate energy, as well as the evolving technology for robotics.
The Boston Beer Company and Dogfish Head Brewery have signed a definitive merger agreement, bringing together two independent craft breweries and their founders and brewers, Jim Koch and Sam Calagione. The new entity will possess more than half a century or craft brewing experience, a balanced portfolio of leading and “beyond beer” brands at high-end price points, and industry leadership in innovation and quality.
Growpacker, a Canadian-based contract manufacturer of THC and CBD-infused edibles and beverages in the U.S., has developed a new proprietary technology used for the emulsification and infusion of THC and or CBD distillate. The technology addresses multiple problems associated with current infusion methods, for example, shelf life instability, which leads to active ingredient degradation over time and inconsistent on- and off-set times.
For the last five years, P&P Optica has delved into creating a high-end, hyperspectral imaging system that can operate in real time on lines for products such as meat and produce.
Some food and beverage plants are potentially well-suited to totally automated process control. Other applications may not be so easy to automate but can still benefit from incremental process control implementations.
According to a new NIST report, blockchain technology is being used to provide not only tamper-resistant transmission of manufacturing data for making machine parts, but also perfect traceability of that data to all participants in the production process.