FA&M gathers food processors and suppliers together for education and exhibits

Welcome to the new FA&M report, our coverage of the 20th annual Food Automation & Manufacturing Conference, Food Engineering’s premier event.

This year’s FA&M got off to memorable start, as bad weather over the weekend complicated travel for a number of attendees and guests, with that topic dominating conversation at the welcome reception. But the first morning of the conference kicked off with a great keynote address from Tyson’s Anthony Doss, and attendees spent the next 2½ days enjoying the speakers and exhibitors who made the show a success.

Following this report, all the companies that exhibited are listed. Enjoy this recap, and we hope to see you at FA&M in 2020.

The Food Plant of the Future

The first speaker of the event was Anthony Doss, vice president-engineering, poultry at Tyson. In his keynote address, Doss addressed the role of engineering in building the food plant of the future.

Processors face an ongoing challenge to hire and keep qualified people, and that challenge is especially pronounced when it comes to skilled labor positions such as engineers. There are literally more jobs than there are people to fill them, and engineers or other employees with skills beyond the basics are becoming harder and harder to find.

“I think everybody feels the pressure of the declining workforce; I know that we certainly do,” says Doss.

But the labor shortage is only part of what engineers have to consider when they think about the food plant of the future, says Doss. He defines three areas that engineers should focus on:

• Accommodating changing consumer demands
• Reacting to declining workforce population
• Adopting higher levels of automation and technology

Consumer demands are constantly changing, but the pace of change is accelerating due to not only lifestyle changes among consumers, but also because of the amount of information available to them. Tools such as social media allow processors to gather more information about what consumers want and how trends are changing, but they also can accelerate how quickly those trends can change.

“Think about how access to information has changed,” Doss says. “The method of accessing information went from books, to desktop computers, to laptop computers, to handhelds and now smartphones, and now even wearables.”

Engineers can use those new tools to gather and understand information, and consumers use them to learn about products and decide on purchases. That speeds up the information gathering process on both sides, and engineers have to understand how to use all of the data they can gather.

That data ties into the third priority Doss named about adopting automation and technology. As processors gain the ability to gather more data from consumers and within their plants, that information can become overwhelming without the tools to manage it and draw useful conclusions.

“Too much data is useless, and engineers are going to need to learn how to filter through this data and really find out what the consumer wants,” he says.

Automation plays into the workforce challenges as well. As it becomes more and more difficult to find workers, automation can help fill some of the gaps. 

“We really don’t have a choice,” says Doss. “Automation is going to be required.”

To see Anthony Doss’ keynote presentation, visit the Food Automation & Manufacturing Broadcast Live website.

Get on the blockchain train

While many food and beverage manufacturers may not be familiar yet with blockchain technology, it’s conceivable they could be locked into using the technology in the next five years or so, especially if they process fresh produce or proteins, says Bob Wolpert, chief strategy and innovation officer, Golden State Foods.

Wolpert—also chair of the Food Trust Blockchain Network Advisory Council—took a poll of the audience by asking who could define blockchain, and only about 10% responded affirmatively. “Let me give you my layman’s simplest explanation about blockchain,” says Wolpert. “Blockchain, first of all, is not bitcoin; it’s not about making money in those exchanges. Blockchain is a transaction platform that allows whoever has permission to be on that platform the ability to transact. It’s what you build on top of that platform that matters.”

In this case, IBM developed a Food Trust Blockchain ecosystem where growers/producers, processors, shippers and retail chains have signed onto it. A well-known example of blockchain’s effectiveness was the comparison between regular track and trace methods and blockchain tracking of a Walmart mango shipment. Blockchain technology reduced the trace time of 6¾ days using existing methods to 2.2 seconds with the Food Trust digital IoT solution. 

Today, Food Trust has garnered support from more than 80 companies, with Albertsons agreeing to sign on. Some participating companies include Golden State Foods, Nestlé, Dole, Walmart, Driscoll’s and Carrefour. Over 1,200 SKUs/items have been digitized, representing more than 4 million transactions with 200,000 traces conducted to date. 

Wolpert offers some key considerations to any processor beginning the blockchain journey:

• Trust and authenticity are hard to quantify in a business case, so find hard dollar benefits and champion trust as the grand prize.
• IoT will inundate us with data. Therefore, processes will need accelerated continuous improvement. Visibility of data will require holding to tighter product and process tolerances, driving faster cycle times on corrective actions.
• Theory, strategy and practical reality need to be regularly rebalanced. Mixing business process, blockchain and IoT brings to light unexpected topics and issues. While deep consumer trust may be five or more years away, tomorrow’s winners will start shaping and building ecosystems now.

What could blockchain have accomplished for the romaine lettuce recall in 2018? According to Wolpert, an FDA traceback diagram released on May 31, 2018, traces the E. coli outbreak, which began in March 2018—a period of three months. Food Trust could have generated a complete traceback in seconds, says Wolpert.

To see Bob Wolpert’s presentation, visit the Food Automation & Manufacturing Broadcast Live website.

The changing face of food safety

As FSMA has come online, the attitude of the FDA has changed, says Shawn Stevens, founding member of Food Industry Counsel.

Stevens is an attorney for the industry who focuses on food safety legal and regulatory consulting services. His firm is the only one in the United States that works with the food industry exclusively.

When FSMA first began to take effect, the FDA was focused on education instead of enforcement. FSMA was the first major change to food safety laws in 70 years, and the agency spent the early part of FSMA’s implementation focused on teaching processors how to properly comply with the new rules and regulations. But now, the agency has shifted to enforcement mode, which Stevens describes as “regulate in order to educate.” Processors are now expected to have plans and processes in place that hold up under scrutiny.

Beyond FSMA, Stevens calls out another area of food safety that is an ongoing challenge: understanding that the profile of recalls is changing. Traditionally, recalls would be somewhat narrow, in that there would be a spike of reports of illnesses or problems with a particular product. But now, they are often for large amounts of food produced over long periods of time, such as the Blue Bell recalls that were nine cases over the span of five years.

Because of this, Stevens says processors have to ask themselves: Do food companies truly understand the microbiological profiles of their facilities? When recalls span large amounts of food over long periods of time, then something is going on in the facility that isn’t being properly addressed. Finding and controlling the possible contaminant must be a key part of any food safety plan, and processors that fail to do so run the risk of doing serious damage to their companies. 

To see Shawn Stevens’ presentation, visit the Food Automation & Manufacturing Broadcast Live website.

The next stage of sustainability

Sustainability has become a cornerstone of food processing, but most of the low-hanging fruit has already been picked.

This requires a shift in how processors think about sustainability. Instead of sustainability being something you do, it has to be who you are, says Mark Braun, president and CEO, Hispanic Cheese Makers.

Braun’s company has embraced sustainability as a core part of how it operates. Part of that was a massive wastewater project that the company undertook over the last couple years. The existing wastewater system couldn’t hold enough to meet requirements, so the company had to haul water away in trucks.

The company decided to invest in a new wastewater lagoon system that exceeds what the facility currently needs by a wide margin to account for future growth. The water, rich in nitrates and other materials that make it a good fertilizer, is shared with local farmers to irrigate their fields, helping satisfy the company’s desire to be a good neighbor to the small town in rural Illinois where the plant is located. 

The wastewater project is only part of the company’s sustainability efforts. Almost everything in the plant is being or has been overhauled to be more sustainable. Lighting has been replaced, high-speed doors have been installed to limit cooling loss, boilers are being replaced with more efficient models, and a reverse osmosis water purification system has replaced the old system of water softeners.

“It is a core of the company,” says Braun. “We have actually changed the culture with our employees. They are more cognizant. They know that this is a value of the company.”

To see Mark Braun’s presentation, visit the Food Automation & Manufacturing Broadcast Live website.

Automation, powered by people

In his Tuesday morning keynote address, Matt Kovar, engineering and facilities manager, Kellogg Company, addressed one of the most critical challenges facing processors pursuing automation: the role of people.

While automation and advanced technology can replace people, they also have to be used in conjunction with people. Employees play a critical role in ensuring that automation strategies are implemented and executed correctly.

“The goal of automation is to improve SQCD: safety, quality, cost and delivery,” says Kovar. “Typically automation projects are going to have to deliver around one of those variables.”

To meet those goals, Kovar cites four key areas as the elements of success for automation:

• Ease of use: Employees are accustomed to easy-to-use solutions in their personal lives. Kovar cites the example of being able to look up the weather on your smartphone instead of having to check a Farmers’ Almanac. So the tools they use at work need to be easy to use as well, to not only help them feel comfortable with the tools, but also reduce the time needed for training.
• Real-time information: Having access to real-time information not only allows a specific employee to manage a specific task, but also allows for plantwide management of resources. Employees can quickly determine what they need and what is available, and the whole plant can understand whether it’s meeting goals or if there’s a particular area that is lagging.
• Value: “So what’s in it for me?” says Kovar. When employees feel like a tool or a process is adding something for them, then they are more inclined to use it and learn ways to make it work better for them. They get engaged with what they’re doing and how they’re doing it, which makes them more effective because they’re looking for ways to solve problems instead of simply going through the motions.
• Transparency: As part of engagement, helping employees understand what is being done and why it is being done helps get them on board. Vague or opaque directives don’t allow employees to understand the why behind processes or new ways of doing things, which leads to resistance instead of acceptance. 

By focusing on these four areas, processor can ensure that their automation projects are embraced by employees who want them to succeed and will put in the effort required.

To see Matt Kovar’s presentation, visit the Food Automation & Manufacturing Broadcast Live website.

Leadership: Setting the Standard

In his more than 40-year career in the food industry, Leonard Heflich held a number of roles, including quality control, food safety, product development and regulatory affairs. He retired from Grupo Bimbo as vice president of food safety, quality and crisis management.

After retiring, Heflich wrote a book on leadership, titled “Balanced Leadership: A Pragmatic Guide for Leading,” and he spoke on leadership at the 2019 Food Automation & Manufacturing Conference.

“Leadership is critical. Not only to organizations and to teams, but even to ourselves as individuals,” says Heflich. “If we’re not capable of leading ourselves, we’re going to have a hard time leading other people. People will recognize that right away.”

As more employees look for opportunities to work on self-directed projects or work teams, people sometimes get the impression that leadership isn’t necessary, says Heflich. But as he points out, there is a difference between managing and leading. While managing is necessary, it isn’t the same thing as leadership, and it is important to recognize the necessary balance between managing a group and leading it.

Heflich offers the following points as the keys to being a great leader:

• Create a vision and communicate it in all you say and do
• Be passionate about your work—take ownership of the results, not just activities
• Care about and support your people—do not allow failure
• Maintain consistent high integrity—be authentic, not perfect
• Challenge yourself and others to learn every day
• Execute—recognize good work and ask for improvement if needed
• Have fun and make it fun

“Work with people and help them succeed, and they will walk through walls for you,” says Heflich.

HPP 101: How a high pressure bath is changing food safety

The technology behind an imposing 90-ton high pressure processing machine is simplistic.

Joyce Longfield, chairperson of the Cold Pressure Council, walked conference attendees through how the “massive hunk of metal” works.

Finished food packages go into a carrier that slides into a large tank, which closes on both ends and fills with water. Pumps force in more water to build to 87,000 psi of pressure—more than in the deep ocean. When the cycle finishes, the pressure drops in about 15 seconds.

“It’s very hard to survive that type of shear extreme,” says Longfield, vice president of product innovation for Good Foods Group, which makes dips, cups of avocado and chicken salad.

Products must have water activity to use HPP, so peanut butter is a no-go, but deli-style meats, drinks and dips work great.

People often think the food will blow up at that level of pressure, or that a grape, for example, would come out squished, Longfield says. But what happens is the bacteria implode, and foods aren’t smashed because the pressure is completely uniform on every single point on the package. 

“It doesn’t matter if listeria is on the outside of it or smack dab in the middle; it will be addressed,” she says.

Companies adopting the technology go through a testing period to determine whether their products need the full 87,000 psi of pressure to kill pathogens. Some seafood companies use lower pressure to get meat out of the shells of lobsters and other crustaceans (the pressure breaks down the protein layer that adheres the meat to the shell), and some juices don’t need the full pressure because their high acidity helps keep bacteria in check.

Panelist Jake Deleon, founder of Origin Almond, says the company’s pressed almond beverages that taste like fruit juice use the highest amount of pressure because of their high fat content, even though acid is added to the drinks.

The amount of time the pressure is held, often just a minute or two, depends on a product’s characteristics, including its water activity level.

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The Cannabis Edibles and Beverages Boom

Cannabis has been the talk of the food industry over the last couple years, and that chatter is only increasing as more states legalize recreational marijuana. The 2018 farm bill also legalized the production of hemp, which, like marijuana, contains CBD, but contains less THC. 

While some food and beverage producers are making products that contain THC, most of the interest in cannabis products comes from CBD, which is not psychoactive. Treehouse Biotech CEO Ryan Beigie discussed the current and future trends that he expects to define the cannabis market.

The three biggest challenges facing the market are:

The regulatory environment: “It’s extremely unclear right now,” says Beigie, citing the differences between industrial hemp and marijuana, as well as the patchwork of state laws regulating the cannabis industry. 

Product sourcing/ingredients: “This is where we’re hopeful that the FDA will come up with some standards,” says Beigie. Without industry standards for the specifics of what ingredients contain, processors run the risk of ending up with ingredients that aren’t what they are expecting. Industrial hemp cannot have a TCH level of more than 0.3%; anything above that is regulated the same way as marijuana. 

That means that processors that want to make a CBD product that is not psychoactive must use an oil with less than 0.3%. Processors need a way to ensure that their ingredients meet that standard.

Working with suppliers within the industry: “Don’t take anything at face value,” says Beigie. As he points out, the patchwork regulatory system allows opportunities for people looking to make a quick buck without any regard for whether their products are in compliance.

To combat this, he suggests asking suppliers for documentation and licensing. Growers should be licensed by their state department of agriculture. Ingredient suppliers should be able to document where everything came from and the components. 

Bonduelle Fresh Americas Receives 2019 Refrigerated Foods Processor of the Year Award

Marina Mayer, editor-in-chief of Refrigerated & Frozen Foods magazine, a sister publication to Food Engineering, presented Bonduelle Fresh Americas with the 2019 Refrigerated Foods Processor of the Year at this year’s FA&M show.

The Refrigerated Foods Processor of the Year award honors a company for its year-over-year growth and leadership in packaging, food safety, new product development, plant expansion and more.  

Bonduelle Fresh Americas started out as Ready Pac Foods in 1969, producing customized fresh-cut salad orders. In 2017, Ready Pac was acquired by Bonduelle in France, and later changed its company name to Bonduelle Fresh Americas.

Today, it produces fresh-cut, ready-to-eat salads and vegetables out of four manufacturing plants, including its headquarters in Irwindale, Calif. 

One of the reasons Bonduelle Fresh Americas received this industry award is that the plant-based, fresh food processor is considered a pioneer of fresh packaging. Its goal is to preserve the planet and enhance sustainability practices. It’s all about creating a better future through plant-based foods.

Go to www.refrigeratedfrozenfood.com/nominationsforRFFawards to learn more about these and other award nomination opportunities.

Women in Manufacturing Keynote
True leadership: Forging your own path

As president of global manufacturing for Dawn Foods, Gabrielle Kalkwijk ensures that Dawn’s manufacturing plants are operating effectively and efficiently. 

Over the course of her more than 25-year career, Kalkwijk has held a number of different roles for different companies. She joined Dawn in 2012 as vice president of operations in Europe and AMEAP (Africa, Middle East and Asian Pacific). 

As she has advanced in the food industry, Kalkwijk has relied upon setting her own path and clearly defining goals for both the short- and long-term. She described how she set her goals for her career when she first started her career.

“When I’m 30, I want to become a plant manager; when I’m 40, I want to be an operations director; when I’m 50, I’d like to have a board position,” she says. “I highly encourage you to do the same. Set your own plan, write down your goals and bear in mind you may veer off your path.”

Kalkwijk did veer off of her own path in 2011, when she resigned from her job without a replacement lined up after more than 20 years with the same company. 

“Either I stayed for the rest of my life or I leave,” she says. “I resigned without having a new job. That was very much out of my comfort zone.”

During that time, she says she learned many things about herself and explored different aspects of her personality, allowing her to get a better perspective before she joined Dawn.

“I realized during my sabbatical that I make my best decisions in my life when I follow my intuition,” she says.

Kalkwijk also discussed her vision of true leadership, which includes knowing your own strengths and weaknesses; understanding what motivates others and how to connect with them; and balancing results with a personal touch. While she has weekly meetings with her team to discuss KPIs, she asks questions based on people’s specific strengths to draw out their perspective and help them recognize and take advantage of their own strengths.

“When we better understand ourselves and each other, we can come to a better performance,” she says. “When we show who we truly are, people try for us and for the company.”

Women in Manufacturing Panel

For the second year, the Food Automation & Manufacturing Conference featured a Women in Manufacturing panel to discuss the challenges women faced in a field dominated by men.

Moderated by Gabrielle Kalkwijk, the panel included:

• Joyce Longfield, vice president of product innovation, Good Foods Group, and chairperson, Cold Pressure Council
• Samara Heaggans, owner, SH Reid Consulting Solutions, formerly with Campbell’s Fresh Division
• Roohi Thakur, process optimization manager, Land O’Frost
• Patti Smith, CEO, Valley Milk

Although the panelists have different backgrounds, roles and career experiences, one common theme they shared was that at some point or another, they have had difficulty being taken seriously by male colleagues. Heaggans shared that even though she has an engineering background and an impressive resume, male colleagues have often failed to take her seriously because she is short and has a high-pitched voice. The other panelists also shared similar experiences, where their technical skills and educational background weren’t enough for colleagues to view them the same way that they would a man with a similar CV.

The panelists also focused on what could be done to fix that challenge, including sharing leadership lessons they have learned along the way. The importance of promoting your own skills and expertise was mentioned repeatedly because, as panelists mentioned, nobody bats an eye when a man in a meeting proclaims himself to be an expert in a particular area. 

While all of the panelists agreed that things have improved for women in the industry, they also acknowledged that women are still a minority in the industry, and the only way that is going to change is to get more girls and young women interested in technical and engineering careers at a younger age. The panelists, all of whom have operational or engineering backgrounds, noted that there were often times in educational or professional settings where they were the only woman, and they stressed the need to encourage more women to explore engineering-oriented career options.

Hiring and Retention: Finding and Keeping Qualified Employees

The food industry is facing a staffing shortage, especially in the skilled labor and engineering areas. One company that has had success with finding and keeping qualified people is FONA, a suburban Chicago-based flavor provider.

Barb Pugesek, FONA’s director of customer and culture excellence, spoke about how the company focuses on its people to ensure that it can attract and retain good employees.

One of FONA’s key initiatives is to bring in recruiters, either in-house or outside the company, to understand the company’s culture and what it’s trying to achieve with employees. The focus is on the following points:

• Who you are
• What you do
• How you do it
• What you value most
• Your great people

“In the past five or six years, we’ve had some breakthrough results in how we do this,” says Pugesek. “We’ve dramatically shortened the time to fill positions. We’ve avoided a lot of the bad hire mistakes and the costs that go with them.

“Really, the secret is small, incremental changes. We’re seeing the retention to prove it and the performance to prove it as well.”

One big area that FONA has focused on is its relationship with recruiters. Pugesek says that when you have a transactional relationship with a recruiter, then you get a transactional result. Recruiters provide a person to fill a position, but they don’t have an incentive to focus on getting the right person for that position. But when you build a relationship with recruiters, not only are they more motivated to help you find the exact person you’re looking for, but they also have a better understanding of the skills and experience that you need in a position.

When it comes to existing employees, FONA focuses on forming relationships between employees and leadership so that information sharing is a two-way street and good ideas don’t fall by the wayside. When employees feel like their ideas are being heard and implemented by leadership, then they are more inclined to share those ideas and feel like they are valued. While compensation, benefits and other quantifiable aspects of employment matter, those things often rank lower on the list of why people leave compared to feeling unappreciated or feeling that their input isn’t considered valuable.

Clean label: What does it mean?

Clean label has no accepted legal or industry definition. But food manufacturers could shape the meaning by helping people understand that hard-to-pronounce or synthetic ingredients aren’t enemies, a food scientist who challenges nutrition myths says.

Manufacturers should embrace their responsibility to teach the public about the ingredients’ benefits, says Kantha Shelke, founder of Corvus Blue, a food science development firm.

“If you educate consumers, they will select synthetics on purpose as a way to avoid the untenable environmental footprint of the natural alternative,” she told the audience.

As an example, she asks which option is more sustainable:

1. Using acres of land, water and energy to grow plants that produce minuscule amounts of natural flavors, sweeteners and phytonutrients?
2. Or using fermentation with bioengineered yeast that’s been altered to produce those things 1,000 times more efficiently?

Ethical concerns, rather than individual worries, will increasingly influence what clean label is all about, says Shelke, who writes about food safety and teaches food law and technology through Johns Hopkins University. More importantly, FSMA will pressure companies to reformulate and complete honest cleanups of labels.

Consumers need to understand that the problem isn’t that ingredients have a lot of syllables or can be harmful in large quantities. More important considerations are: how the ingredients are used, that safe amounts are included, and how you eat them “in the grand context of everything else that you do,” she says.

“Every single thing that we consume contains something that is not good for us,” Shelke notes. Even salt or water can kill you if you consume too much, and you’ll have problems if you avoid them.

She challenges manufacturers—“if anyone has the guts”—to say to consumers: “Here’s why I’m using this ingredient, and here’s what science has done, and here’s how it’s going to affect it (the product). And by the way, if you eat eight buckets of it, you are going to be injured, but otherwise, it’s perfectly OK.”

She predicts that kind message will resonate with most people. The public typically doesn’t understand the details about how food is made and doesn’t trust the food industry at the moment, she says, but people really want to know this kind of information.

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Takeaways from Solutions Theaters

As always, this year’s FA&M featured our popular Solutions Theater presentations, which are smaller breakout sessions that allow companies to present their solutions directly to attendees and answer question. 

The Solutions Theaters allow for attendees and companies to discuss the challenges faced by processors every day and explore ways to meet those challenges.

FE editors provide a brief synopsis of what the Solutions Theaters addressed this year.

Keep bacteria out of conveyor drives

Presented by Van der Graaf
Speaker: Alex Kanaris, president, Van der Graaf

If you’ve worked in a chicken plant or seen meat come down conveyors, you know how much fat and debris can build up around sprockets and motor drives.

For decades, drum motors from Van der Graaf have boosted sanitary operations of conveyors in numerous plants, especially ones with high bacteria levels, such as poultry facilities.

The company’s SSV sanitary series drum motors are built around the idea of keeping bacteria out. The conveyor drives are an all-in-one, compact design with the motor, gear drive and all moving parts protected inside the sealed drum. Workers won’t get hurt on external moving parts typical of a conventional drive, and pathogens aren’t getting inside.

“It’s away from the environment. The environment does not harm the drive,” President Alex Kanaris told the audience.

As the company likes to say: “The SSV sanitary drum motor leaves no place for bacteria to hide.”

The motor and gears operate in an oil bath, ensuring proper lubrication and cooling. The belt profile is machined directly onto the drum, working with modular, wire mesh and thermoplastic belts. VDG cites other advantages: energy reduction, free of maintenance, low noise level, faster washdown and longer life.

The company started offering in the past year its next-generation IntelliDrive drum motor that is Ethernet and MODBUS ready to wirelessly vary speed and analyze how the motor is running. It uses a permanent magnet motor that provides about 70% electrical savings without loss of torque.

Incentives for food manufacturers

Presented by Development Advisors
Speaker: Zach Kimball, managing director, Development Advisors

Whether you’re building a greenfield facility or expanding your current site, you can’t afford to overlook the incentives that may be available to you in tax abatements—or better yet—cold hard cash. These incentives can come from local or state governments, ports, railroads and utilities.

Can you do this research yourself? Maybe if you’re Amazon.com. However, if you go it alone, it’s likely you could miss out on some opportunities you didn’t know were available. Zach Kimball, managing director at Development Advisors, provided some tips to processors who are in the process of site searches. While you may know the mayor, county commissioner(s) or the governor, incentive funds are usually under the management and control of housing and economic development groups (county or state), and that’s where processors need to start their search for incentives, Kimball said.

Development Advisors intercedes between manufacturers and state and/or local governments to locate funding that in many cases processors don’t even know exists—even if all they’re doing is CAPEX improvements. For example, Kimball has seen manufacturers spending tens and hundreds of millions of dollars year over year in just routine CAPEX investment in plants and not getting a single dollar back in incentives. Kimball emphasized “packaging a project,” which means listing new jobs, average wages and any needed hard infrastructure (roads, water, sewer, rail sidings, etc.) that can be offset partially or fully with incentives.

An overlooked way to cut energy costs

Presented by Calpine Energy Solutions
Speaker: Sarah Johnston, Powerfolio community services director, Calpine Energy Solutions

Many businesses lump energy purchases in with buying supplies like paper.

But they’ll miss out on savings with that mindset, says Sarah Johnston, Powerfolio commodity services director, Calpine Energy Solutions.

Food companies, particularly those in states that allow a choice in energy providers, should push aside the thinking that they’re simply buying gas and electricity, she says. Instead, they need to understand that they’re managing a portfolio of financial exposures.

That shift in thinking about managing energy “changes the way it’s thought about by the organization and changes the way it’s managed by the organization,” she says.

The price difference will become clear when your company examines: when you buy gas or electricity, how long you buy for and how much you buy.

“There are times, depending on market, depending on what you do strategically, this can easily equate to a 20% difference or more in your energy spend.”

Calpine Energy Solutions, among the five-largest U.S. retail energy providers, works with 1,300 clients to analyze their risks and find savings, typically focused on companies with complex footprints or with significant enough energy spending to warrant strategic portfolio management. 

Industry 4.0 with Valves and Sensors

Presented by Burkert Fluid Control Systems
Speaker: Curtis Bares, team manager hygienic and water, Burkert Fluid Control Systems

Automation began with steam power and mechanization, now known as Industry 1.0, and was followed by mass production—thanks to the assembly line and electricity (Industry 2.0). In the 1980s, computers and automation (Industry 3.0) set the stage for what we know as Industry 4.0, a world of cyber-physical systems and the internet, said Curtis Bares, team manager hygienic and water, Burkert Fluid Control Systems.

Today’s Industry 4.0 design principles include interoperability, information transparency, technical assistance (i.e., the ability of a device to provide self-diagnostics or to support humans with performing exhausting or unsafe tasks), and decentralized decisions (the ability of cyber physical systems to make their own decisions within predefined boundaries).

Where is all this technology leading in terms of plant floor devices? Bares explained, “We want the device not to require any human interaction; we want the device—whatever it may be— eventually to say, ‘I’m wearing out and I will fail soon, and I need to order spare parts right now.’ And that order gets placed in whatever system you have, and when it ships, it comes tagged with where it needs to go in the plant.” 

Most important, Bares advised, no matter where you plan to go with networking strategies, be sure to have a literal map (diagram) of your current network architecture so you have control over future additions and know what’s going on when a problem arises. When a digitally operated valve is sluggish or stops working, it may not be an actual mechanical problem at all, but the fault of extreme network loading on a poorly planned network. 

Need to customize? Automation, machines that adapt will help

Presented by ABB
Speaker: Todd Gilliam, U.S. food and beverage leader, ABB

Food companies are trying to please shoppers that like “rainbow packaging” of products in varied assortments. Think of 12 sodas in different flavors or a custom mix of chocolates.

Businesses face numerous challenges, such as increased downtime, to produce more limited edition varieties in customized packaging. With automation advances to help with short runs and mix-and-match packaging, the industry is close to the ultimate goal of a batch size on one, says Todd Gilliam, U.S. food and beverage leader for ABB, the global technology, robotics and machinery company.

He shared an overview of available automation technologies and adaptive machines with the food manufacturing engineers and executives at the conference who grapple with how to adjust to shorter product cycles and frequent launches. Here are Gilliam’s insights about a couple types of machines that will help:

Collaborative robots
Food companies will get the full benefits of the “factory of the future” when they use robots to work with people and connect those robots to a plant’s broader digital ecosystem.

Adaptive machines
These machines allow plants to add track segments and stations, as a more affordable alternative to adding machines or replacing outdated equipment. They’re needed for the “fourth generation of packaging,” requiring mass customization without sacrificing efficiency.

Different pieces and parts make up the line, as opposed to a traditional long conveyor run with accumulation tables, which requires working around bottlenecks and constraints, Gilliam says. 

“You basically have a modular build-it-as-you-need approach. Think of a Lego type of concept of piecing together the different curves and elbows and straight runs … Let the machine adapt to the production and not the other way around.”

The Power of the IoT and Advanced Analytics

Presented by ei3 Corporation
Speakers: Patrick Donoghue, senior solution sales engineer, Lenze, and Craig Rowles, executive vice president, ei3 Corporation

Data-driven manufacturing purports to create some really big savings—for example, 10-20% reduction in the cost of quality; 10-40% reduction in maintenance costs; 30-50% reduction of total machine downtime; and a 3-5% increase in productivity. But are these numbers realizable? 

In a former manufacturing position, Craig Rowles, executive vice president of ei3 Corporation, says his company had achieved goals like these by applying lean principles and analytical software tools. Now with ei3, he wants to help other manufacturers achieve these goals, and there is keen interest from processors in chasing after them.

Imagine a precision cutting/slicing machine, which is an integrated component within a production/packaging line. While the local technicians can fine-tune the machine to keep its blades in alignment (takes a half-hour to an hour), if the cutting blades go severely out of alignment, causing them damage, then the machine has to be shut down. Because of the complexity of the machine, no one on site can fix it. So either the contractor or OEM has to come in and fix it. Meanwhile, the machine and the line could be down for a couple of weeks. 

“You can prevent that from happening; it takes about half an hour to an hour to realign the blades and get it up and running again,” says Rowles. He played an audio recording of a properly running cutting system and then the sounds of the blades going out of alignment, headed toward catastrophic failure. Solution to the problem: Install a microphone, analyze the sounds, record and process the data—and let technicians know when to fine-tune rather than have the machine break completely and halt production.

Constructing a “digital twin” or model of the machine using digital transformation creates a path to predictive maintenance (PdM) in six steps: connect machines, monitor machine data, track KPIs and downtimes, do a data science analysis in the cloud, process stream data to send alerts, and finally, create a predictive maintenance business model that can be applied to real-world systems.

“The cost of implementing IIoT is far less than the cost of a [staff] person, and the monthly fee is roughly like paying your cell phone bill,” says Patrick Donoghue, senior solution sales engineer, Lenze, a machine builder and user of ei3’s PdM solution. Once such a system is implemented, it multiplies the capabilities of the people who are on staff, a must considering how difficult it is to find technically qualified people, Donoghue added.

Maximize value with optimized scheduling

Presented by OptTek
Speaker: Marco Better, vice president of analytics, OptTek

Why optimal production scheduling? Maybe for any or all of the following issues: The executive board says we’re not hitting our ROI, and we need to improve it. Manufacturing says there are too many changes and disruptions on the shop floor; we’re not working as efficiently as we can. Sales calls and says our on-time delivery is slow; we need to improve that. Engineering says we designed those machines to run continuously, and we have stoppages, changeovers and disruption. Finally, finance says sales are down; we need to increase throughput. How does a production scheduler meet these goals all at once? asks Marco Better, OptTek vice president.

“We need optimal production scheduling,” Better says. It would appear that in order to increase throughput, you need to invest in additional capacity, labor and technology. What if there were a technology that would allow you to increase throughput without increasing costs? And that shift could be sustainable permanently—not just one time. “That’s what we propose with optimal production scheduling,” says Better. 

In order to do this, three things need to happen. First, jobs need to be sized, and batches/production runs need to be created. Second, the production runs need to be assigned to different production lines, machines and resources. Finally, those jobs need to be sequenced optimally on each line in order to achieve a set of objectives, which could be maximizing throughput, minimizing operating costs, minimizing changeovers, etc. Some of these objectives, however, are in conflict with each other. 

Optimal production scheduling—in order to maximize quantity produced (throughput)—requires several mathematical formulas to describe, for example, assigning batch runs to production lines, setting maximum inventory limits, setting minimum inventory limits, creating sequencing variables, sequencing batch production on each line and limiting production time on each line, Better explains.

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