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.
The state of Virginia’s Occupational Safety and Health Program has issued seven citations and $187,000 in penalties to a food and beverage company after a worker’s arm was caught in a conveyor near the metal detector.
Styrotek, a manufacturer of expanded polystyrene foam packaging for grapes, recently undertook a major water efficiency program. In eight weeks, the company reduced its water usage from 20 million gallons per year to 12 million.
Originally designed for the pharmaceutical industry where fraudulent copies of drugs are common, software developers are aiming at other high-value industries.
Adents, a serialization and track-and-trace solutions provider, has developed a new unit-level product track-and-trace platform using Blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies.
ERP solutions provider SAP and process industry solutions provider Endress+Hauser are intensifying their joint efforts in integrating field instruments and ERP analytics through IIoT-based applications for the process industry.
Food Engineering's 41st annual Plant Construction Survey reveals that the ratio of the number of plant renovations and expansions versus new, greenfield projects has again risen from last year, indicating several owners and operators are trying to stay put.
Just as the Internet makes use of hardware to relay data via the best routes regardless of who owns the hardware, a new “Physical Internet” for the Cold Chain (aka Cold PI) initiative is being developed by Tippmann Innovation (Ti) and Georgia Tech’s Supply Chain and Logistics Institute and the Physical Internet Center.
Food Engineering features some thoughts on the recent Romaine lettuce contamination by Aaron Cohen, co-founder of CoInspect and adjunct professor at New York University where he teaches the History of Internet Media. FE conducted an exclusive, one-on-one interview with Cohen, immediately following Cohen’s text.