Food and Beverage

Are you ready to reduce your innovation cycle time and make digital transformation your core strategy? The food and beverage industry’s increasing competition and digital evolution are turning buzzwords like digitalization, automation, the Internet of Things (IoT), and real-time data into critical strategies. However, what does this transformation mean for your business?

Successful food and beverage companies are already accustomed to demand volatility (from suppliers and customers), ongoing opportunities, the need to adapt in order to prevail. Therefore, even if digitalization seems daunting, an in-depth understanding of your goals and how automation and related technology support your digital journey pays off significantly in the form of increased production volume and transparency, reduced downtime, and complexity cost. Consider the significant industrial change that the pandemic brought forth. Success-oriented companies adopted measures to ensure employee safety, ensure the continuity of their manufacturing facilities, and to continuously deliver their services globally. However, what elements of Industry 4.0 can we help you tap into in order to enable the operational improvements and commercial benefits that come with it?

The key drivers to your automation success are Cyber-Physical Production Systems, Industrial Internet of Things, Big Data Analytics, Cloud Manufacturing, and Additive Manufacturing. As your partner, B2E Automation does not impulsively add technology to your operation. Instead, our engineers help you through a successful digital journey that is guided by your vision, purpose, objectives, and planning.

The Step Towards Business Continuity and Competitive Advantage

It takes the proper identification of best practices and capabilities to fully realize the opportunities of technology. Factories and companies that adopt automation witness a holistic improvement in the entire manufacturing value chain.

Food and Beverage product development benefits from data gathered from the internet of things

Where It All Begins — Investing in Research and Development (R&D)

Historically, the Food and Beverage industry has been known to contribute minimally to Research and Development compared to other industries. But there are many productive research avenues that are available including developing ingredients and formulas, product ranges, improving nutritional content or texture, prototyping, providing healthier alternatives, sustainable packaging, lengthening shelf life, minimizing contamination, effective waste handling, and other related processes.

Integrating the Internet of Things in laboratories automates processes, boosts efficiency, and facilitates effective data handling by managing larger volumes of data, data collection, and data processing. More importantly, you can utilize resources sustainably while improving sourcing decisions, efficient quality monitoring, and traceability.

Build Upstream Efficiencies – Automating Supply Chain in the Food and Beverage Industry

The call for sustainability is not limited to resourcing. As complexities in the food and beverage supply chain expand, it becomes more important to integrate multiple sophisticated systems within the supply chain system from sourcing to end-user. These systems respond to consumer sensitivities about food production and distribution that are affecting the environment.

Similar to the benefits of automating R&D that eliminate errors, the wasting of time, and improve transparency, automation applies to all touchpoints for tracking food, quality, and order management. Moreover, through appropriate cooling and air compressor systems, early defect detection cuts down the number of problematic goods entering the market. This all translates into providing more value addition and improved processing speed for all stakeholders.

Automation can increase food quality and food safety

Smart Factory Operations – It's all in the Process!

When we speak of processes, their diversity calls for an entirely different discussion thread. B2E Automation is willing to tackle any process, regardless of how complex or esoteric your company's end-product is. Whether it is brewing, sugar production, agricultural production, baking, or sensing fouling in chocolate spreads through a multi-sensor system, we can help by building solutions.

Digitalization and automation with vast sensor networks and data analytics tools improve manufacturing sustainability, productivity, and enable continuous improvement activities through predictive maintenance.

Success stories quickly emerge from automated data analytics, cloud-based training, AI-based product improvements, human-machine collaboration apps, and machine learning correlation models. Models trained with historical data of various processing variables make it easier for companies to improve raw material savings and scalability. In the end, it is all about developing an all-inclusive digitalization journey that optimizes, automates, and integrates rapid decision-making throughout the organizational hierarchy.

Improving Quality Control, Sanitation, and Reducing Downtime

Process automation also highlights companies' priorities to encompass quality, safety, and regulatory constraints. Automated equipment limits human contact with food products, and thus limit contamination and improve overall quality fluctuations and control. Automated quality control can be part of core policymaking with aseptic packaging, collaborative robots, metal detectors, seal inspections, vertical and horizontal form fill seals, and other automation technologies.

Are You Ready to Take the Next Step?

Your ability to adapt agility to weave design, manufacturing, engineering, and supply chain functionalities to capture, exploit, and leverage data across the value chain for meaningful use gives you a clear advantage over less digitally mature food and beverage companies.

Adopting automation alongside all the phase-gate processes can lead you towards Industry 5.0 – an industrial revolution that furthers the relationships between machines and humans. Are you ready to join us in revolutionizing the food and beverage industry?