The steady and unobtrusive advance of IT in the food industry

Jos Hensen was recently interviewed by André Hiddink, Product Manager IT infrastructure, within Rittal Netherlands. The topic of the conversation was the IT developments in the food industry.

Hiddink: “For me, the food industry is a broad denominator where you come across everything from traditional to high-tech.”

Hensen: “You’re right about that. Let us therefore limit ourselves in this conversation to the production companies that we advise. These are mostly medium-sized companies that make consumer products or are suppliers for others in a long chain. You can safely say that companies generally still have a lot of room for the use of modern IT systems.”

Bottlenecks

Hiddink: ”How would you characterize IT use in this sector and what are the bottlenecks?”

Hensen: “All companies rely on IT. We regularly encounter companies that run up against limits due to organic growth or acquisitions. The ERP or custom package that was purchased ten years ago is no longer useful. That is a potential bottleneck. Another factor is that a lot of data is still recorded on forms during production and then stored in different departments. Audits are taking longer and longer, because it is difficult to extract that information from the separate systems and documents. Tracking and tracing, which is very important in this sector, requires more and more effort. It is difficult for companies to respond to the increasing demand for faster data provision.”

Hiddink: “There is a logical structure of systems in production environments. I see PLC with little intelligence everywhere, DCS and Scada forming the bottom layer.”

Hensen: “You see these systems at many companies. We see that more and more companies are implementing an MES “on top of” the PLC and SCADA systems. The operator then gets all the required information on his screen. All registrations are made directly in the MES. The amount of paper on the work floor is reduced or even disappears. The big advantage is that all information about the product and the process is stored in one system. In addition, we see the rise of the so-called Historians. These systems are capable of storing large amounts of data available in the PLC. It gives the operator more insight into the course of the process and the stored data is extremely valuable in improving the processes.”

Sensors

Hiddink: “What about the adoption of sensors that not only measure, but adjust the processes themselves?”

Hensen: “We notice that there is increasing interest from the production companies. You have to stay within the specs. The faster data is available, the sooner adjustments can be made. It is inevitable for costs and efficiency that smart sensors will be used. The only question is when.

At the moment, it is often an operator who takes a sample, analyzes it and adjusts the process accordingly. There are already sensors specifically for the food industry that can measure product properties, such as moisture content, protein content and dry matter. They are getting smaller, more reliable and cheaper. As a result, they can be built into the process more often.”

Dates

Hiddink: “Does the demand for the location and ownership of data play a major role in the food industry?”

Hensen: ”We see interesting developments there. The first is that customers increasingly agree with the supplier about the performance of the machine. The supplier has remote access to the machine and monitors it. The supplier can then intervene before a malfunction occurs.

The second is that innovative sensors will become available that are built into the process. A lot of computing power is required to convert the measured values into usable control information. That computer power is no longer with the customer, but with the supplier. This relieves the customer’s worries, but a third party has access to customer data and access to the data network.

A third development is that the IT applications no longer run on-premise, but in an external data center. The big advantage for the customer is that he no longer has to worry about the technology. We will see that people are still hesitant to put applications that have a direct influence on the progress of production in the cloud. The servers of SCADA and MES, for example, are still kept local.

The discussions about data emphatically cover more than just the process data of business-critical systems and the infrastructure required for this. More and more data is also being added from, for example, access control and building management. Where do you put all that data and how do you guarantee its integrity? Fortunately, that is being looked at closely.”

Business continuity

Hiddink: “I am familiar with such considerations and issues from other sectors. I am amazed that the food industry is only now starting to appear.”

Hensen: “That deserves some nuance. More and more companies are realizing that both systems and people are a risk to business continuity. With systems you have to think of environments where XP is still being used. This is difficult when more and more systems are connected to the internet. Humans also play a role. In many companies we will see a large outflow of the older generations in the coming years. With that, knowledge is lost. That is why a professionalization process is now underway, in which everything that we discussed above is being looked at. At the same time, it is also the time to think about the attractiveness of the work. Try to recruit new staff in this tight labor market if your processes are still based on pen and paper.”

Hiddink: “So the sector is changing?”

Hensen: “Of course. The sector wants to move with the times, innovate faster and respond to new market demands. We also see that companies are keeping their eyes and ears open to timely identify disruption that has struck mercilessly in other sectors.”

Hiddink: “Besides efficiency, competition is a driver for optimizing processes?”

Hensen: “Absolutely, but we are talking about a long chain. When you look at a link it seems as if it is not moving, but that image is not correct. I would characterize it as a slow and unobtrusive advance of more IT in the sector. Those sensors are coming, everyone is convinced of that. The data needs to be more open and stored somewhere, people know that. But it must be safe, quickly accessible and usable. Those requirements should be grist to Rittal’s mill.”

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Blogs

August 2, 2023/by Steven Hensen

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Sensors

Dates

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