Smartphones and other devices make accessing IT/OT systems on the plant floor easier, but the use of personal devices may cause security and legal problems.
Smartphones on the plant floor: Bring your own device (BYOD) or use company-owned devices? This question no doubt conjures up a multitude of things—good and bad—for personal devices on the plant floor, for example, connecting people with equipment and company data and providing workers with actionable information on the process and maintenance to make good decisions.
Having contingency plans for your facility, before disaster strikes, is essential to maintaining production capacity and negating devastating effects of natural disasters, epidemics, supply-chain crises, and other potential disruptions.
There are many who believe Murphy is a constant companion of food processors around the world. This is the Murphy as in Murphy’s Law and, “Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.” This may seem rather pessimistic, but it is a fact of life especially for those who are long-time members of the industry.
Moving from an automated plant to a smart factory is a leap forward but well worth the effort to enable a fully connected and flexible system—one that can use a constant stream of data from connected equipment and production systems to learn and adapt to new demands.
Given their innumerable medical benefits, especially for mental health, processed fruits and vegetables have now secured a prominent position in the global food and nutrition industry.
Nearly every industry is full of acronyms. LEED, USGBC, IMP, SIP, ICF, AIA, BIM, CAD, P.E. and ASHRAE are the construction-related acronyms I was able to prattle off without really thinking about it. But keeping straight what they stood for when I first started out took a little bit more time, let alone understanding which was which.
Americold’s facility in Dunkirk, N.Y., was built with LEED certified energy efficiency in mind, and Oishii’s vertical strawberry farm is opening doors for a different variety of vertically farmed produce.
For our coverage of Fabulous Food Plants this year, we decided to do something a little bit different in honor of “plants,” aka flora. When we think of food plants, we almost immediately think of processing facilities, but there’s so much more to food production than the processing plant. So, seeing how plant-based foods are altering the ways consumers think about protein, we decided to alter the way we think about food plants.
According to a white paper by Innophos, mechanical processes alone aren’t enough for plant-based alternatives to fully replicate the sensory experience of animal-based protein.
There’s no doubt that the plant-based alternative-protein market is growing. While profitability varies from producer to producer, as a whole the market is growing. Markets and Markets says in one report that the global plant-based meat market is projected to increase from $4.3 billion in 2020 to $8.3 billion in 2025, growing at a CAGR of 14.0%.
Soy protein ingredients remain in heightened demand in three specific business sectors to due nutritional value, supply-chain stability and protein value.