Industries such as food and beverage manufacturing and consumer packaged goods (CPG) production are fast-moving environments, with high traceability and proof-of-quality requirements alongside  throughput demands. As such, automation offers a lot of benefits to operations — so changes to existing systems, or implementing new ones can be seen as a source of risk, rather than opportunity. Here, Sam Kirby, a Solutions Engineer for Novotek UK & Ireland, looks at how manufacturers in the food, beverage and CPG sectors can reliably and rapidly extend automation deployments. 

The food and beverage industry has a long history with automated systems. In fact, one of the first fully automated production processes was that of an automatic flour mill, in 1785. The industry has generally kept abreast of automation developments since then, allowing it to keep ahead of ever-growing demand. Similar is true of CPG production, particularly in recent years, as product innovation has become a key business strategy.

CPG and food and beverage production tend towards automation because, in both sectors, much of the workforce is at the field level. As such, connecting systems to gain greater visibility into equipment health, output performance and product quality is invaluable. This is nothing new; engineers have been undertaking such projects for years, In particular, firms in these sectors have firmly established the benefits of connectivity and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems. 

“Efficient HMI” Concept – being delivered by GE Digital.

Experience serving the industrial sector has shown that in the most productive environments, SCADA systems present screen to operators that are easy to interpret. By having the operator’s work foremost in screen design, they can be up to 40%  more effective in spotting issue that require technical teams to resolve. Engineers can then respond faster to events on the production line. GE Digital has been delivering templates intended to support this “Efficient HMI” concept as part of their IFIX HMI/SCADA system. 

The templates, refine HMI displays to focus on the most critical information related to executing the work. This decluttered interface improves operator effectiveness in regular operation, and makes it easier to spot issues exceptions, with means improved situational awareness, and more focused reactions to such issues. The overall effect is a higher level of productivity, on measures such as machine utilisation, throughput and quality.

Following this approach, IFIX also features preconfigured sample systems that are aimed at elements of the food, beverage and CPG industries. For example, Novotek can supply the IFIX software with a preset tailored for juice plants, with a display that provides an overview of processes from raw material intake to filling and packaging. Beverage production engineers can run this system immediately following installation to gain an immediate assessment of how production is performing. Even where adaptation is needed, the templates provide working examples of both the efficient look-and-feel, and of the most modern approaches to the technical configuration underneath it all. So engineers and IT teams get a practical hand in furthering their technical knowledge, smoothing the adoption of new versions and related modern development tools. 

It’s not unusual for engineers to believe that preset templates might not adequately fit their unique operations, yet we’ve found that the preconfigured settings often provide a substantial benefit. Of course there is no substitute for testing this directly, which is why Novotek and GE Digital offer CPG companies and food and beverage manufacturers a free demo of IFIX to see how effectively the templates suit them. 

Automation may not necessarily be something new for the food, beverage and CPG sectors, but its continued evolution brings with it new implementation challenges and operational complexities. Novotek values the work by GE Digital on the Efficient HMI concept and application templates as they offer useful tools to customers to help them modernise quickly and safely. And by sharing the methods and example applications, the customer’s IT and engineering groups are given a helping hand in building a bridge from the technical realities of long-established SCADA systems to a more modern solution. 

Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses across the UK have faced a surge in cybercrime. In fact, research indicates that UK businesses experienced one attempted cyberattack every 46 seconds on average in 2020. Industrial businesses are a prime target for hackers and the ramifications of a data breach or denial-of-service attack are far-reaching, making system security imperative. Here, David Evanson, corporate vendor relationship manager at Novotek UK and Ireland, explains how industrial businesses can keep their vital systems secure.

For many business leaders and engineers, it is still tempting to consider large multinational companies or data-rich digital service providers to be the prime target for hackers. However, the growing volume of cyberattacks on businesses globally show that any company can be a target of malicious attacks on systems and services.

According to research by internet service provider Beaming, there were 686,961 attempted system breaches among UK businesses in 2020, marking a 20 per cent increase on 2019. Of these attacks, Beaming noted that one in ten intended to gain control of an Internet of Things (IoT) device — something that indicates a tendency to target system continuity rather than conventional data.

Both factors together are cause for alarm among industrial businesses of all sizes. Hackers are targeting all manner of companies, from start-ups to global organisations, and focussing more on the growing number of internet-connected devices and systems that were previously isolated.

The consequences of a device being compromised range from data extraction to service shutdown, and in any case the financial and production impacts to an industrial business are significant. There is no single quick fix to bolster cybersecurity due to the varying types of hacks that can take place. Some cyberattacks are complex and sophisticated; others less so. Many attacks on devices tend to fall into the latter category, which means there are some steps industrial businesses can take to minimise risk.

Novotek has been working closely with industrial businesses in the UK and Ireland for decades. One common thing that we have observed with automation hardware and software is that many engineers do not regularly upgrade software or firmware. Instead, there is a tendency to view automation as a one-off, fit-and-forget purchase. The hardware may be physically maintained on a regular schedule, but the invisible software aspect is often neglected.

Older firmware is more susceptible to hacks because it often contains unpatched known security vulnerabilities, such as weak authentication algorithms, obsolete encryption technologies or backdoors for unauthorised access. For a programmable logic controller (PLC), older firmware versions make it possible for cyber attackers to change the module state to halt-mode, resulting in a denial-of-service that stops production or prevents critical processes from running.

PLC manufacturers routinely update firmware to ensure it is robust and secure in the face of the changing cyber landscape, but there is not always a set interval between these updates.

In some cases, updates are released in the days or weeks following the discovery of a vulnerability — either by the manufacturer, Whitehat hackers or genuine attackers — to minimise end-user risk. The firmware version’s upgrade information should outline any exploits that have been fixed.

However, it’s important to note that legacy PLCs may no longer receive firmware updates from the manufacturer if the system has reached obsolescence. Many engineers opt to air-gap older PLCs to minimise the cybersecurity risk, but the lack of firmware support can also create interoperability issues with connected devices. Another part of the network, such as a switch, receiving an update can cause communications and compatibility issues with PLCs running on older versions — yet another reason why systems should run on the most recent software patches.

At this stage, engineers should invest in a more modern PLC to minimise risk — and, due to the rate of advancement of PLCs in recent years, likely benefit from greater functionality at the same time.

Firmware vulnerabilities are unavoidable, regardless of the quality of the PLC. At Novotek, we give extensive support for the Emerson PACSystems products that we provide to businesses in the UK and Ireland. This involves not only support with firmware updates as they become available, but also guidance on wider system resilience to ensure that businesses are as safe as possible from hardware vulnerabilities. The growth in cyberattacks will continue long beyond the end of the COVID-19 pandemic, and infrastructure and automation are increasingly becoming targets. It may seem a simple step, but taking the same upgrade approach to firmware that we do with conventional computers can help engineers to secure their operations and keep running systems safely.

Food production is truly a sector that operates under the mantra of “reinvent the everyday, every day”. The sector is constantly evolving, whether manufacturers are innovating new product ranges that meet changing consumer tastes or switching packaging materials to extend shelf-life or reduce waste. And these are just examples of substantial shifts; food manufacturers are also regularly making smaller challenges by refining recipes, adapting processes or adjusting ingredient and material supply lines.

Despite — or perhaps because of — the environment of constant change, food processors can benefit more than many other manufacturers from carefully targeted use of data collection, visualisation and analysis solutions. After all, yesterday’s optimisation isn’t particularly optimal if today means a new stock-keeping unit (SKU), a new critical ingredient supplier or a new recipe.

The approach that many businesses take to becoming data-driven is to extensively map out their digitalisation journey, with each aspect comprehensively planned. This doesn’t generally support the flexibility needed in food manufacturing.

Rather than taking this approach, modern solutions make it possible to build or buy micro-applications that share common data infrastructure and even app-building or visualisation tools. This means that impactful new capabilities can be adopted through fast initial works that create re-usable building blocks. Later works then become incremental, rather than potentially having different systems creating overlapping capabilities.

Micro-apps in practice

We can see how this micro-app approach can be put into action by considering one of the most common challenges in food processing: managing the effect of variability in key ingredients, so that yields are maximised with minimal re-work or ingredient waste. It’s likely that a manufacturer would already have some of the information needed to address the challenge. The question is, how can you quickly supplement what’s in place?

It’s a safe bet that the factory has automation and maybe supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, so there is an abundance of machine-generated data to tell us about the details of how processes are performing. Focussing more closely on yield performance, we can assume our manufacturer has a lab system where in-process and finished good tests give very clear indicators of how well a product is being made.

From Novotek’s experience, the most common gaps in tackling yield issues come from two areas. The first is supplier quality data, which is often provided either written down or in an electronic format that doesn’t mesh with existing systems. This makes analysis more difficult, because there’s no actual database to work from.

The second area is that the variations in raw materials that affect yields may actually be within the specifications defined for those materials. As such, there may not be an obvious fix. It’s likelier that material data needs to be analysed alongside several process performance and quality performance data points. Understanding the relationships between more than two or three variables will probably mean adding a new kind of analysis tool.

Micro-apps can be highly focussed on the core capabilities required. In this case, the micro-app would provide three core functions. First, it would provide a simple means to capture ingredient quality data as it’s received, into a system that also holds the specific material characteristic specifications and limits – all on a “by-lot” basis. It would also offer a machine learning tool that can help clarify how the range of material quality variation can be managed in relation to what machine settings or recipe adjustments might allow for good final yield and quality results.

Finally, the micro-app would be able to alert production staff to make recommended changes to a recipe or process as different raw material lots are staged for use – an automated monitor of yield/quality risk from material variation. This could be as simple as a new smart alarm sent back to existing SCADA, or a notification on a smartphone.

Industrial software vendors are adapting their offers, in recognition of the trend towards micro-apps aimed at specific business processes. So, the software licensing needed to enable material data collection and quality specification monitoring on a key process would be built around a low user count and narrow set of underlying configuration and integration points, rather than a comprehensive plant-wide project. That can mean starting investments in the low thousands for software and some deployment work.

Some of Novotek’s customers are now progressing through projects defined by such very specific functional needs. Our job at Novotek is to ensure that any new solutions serve the purpose of being able to act as supplements to other such micro-apps in the future.

Next stages

A strategic advantage of micro-apps is that the planning and execution stages are less time-intensive than a far-reaching, plant-wide digitalisation project. Food engineers can do several things to begin reinventing their everyday processes. For example, food manufacturers can deploy predictive downtime applications on key processes. These are apps that can even take into consideration whether the products made have their own impact on failure modes.

Each micro-app reflects an opportunity to make the overall food manufacturing operation more adaptable. This means that innovation in products, processes and business models can be done, all the while knowing that refining and optimising the “new” won’t be held up by tools and practices that are too difficult to adapt from the “old”.

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In the past 12 months, the food industry has been forced to re-evaluate and re-assess its operational priorities. For years, many manufacturers focussed on flexible production to enable diverse product lines and mass customisation, in line with shifting consumer demands. In 2020, this was forced to change, and production efficiency and operational adaptability became the focus. Once more, automation and digital technologies came to the forefront of food manufacturing priorities.

Digitalisation is a word that has been banded around a lot in industrial markets for the past few years, serving as a catch-all phrase encompassing everything that generates, records and communicates data. Unfortunately, as with most amorphous phrases, this leads to confusion among managers about how to introduce these technologies, which causes costly errors in implementation, such as overlapping data collection systems or introduction of technologies that do not serve a strategic purpose.

For food manufacturers at the beginning of their digitalisation journey, the first step is to define an agreed and important goal, which the company can reverse engineer a solution from. Whether looking to deliver on a continuous improvement object that has been identified as part of a formal process, or just illustrating the value of an engineering team unleashed with time to think, it’s key to let the desired improvement dictate what kind of digitalisation will be needed.

For example, if material costs are too high and the agreed goal is to reduce them, a digitalisation project should establish systems that identify the factors influencing this. Understanding the root causes for yield problems could require a combination of machine data, ambient condition data, quality or lab data and information about material quality provided by suppliers. Thinking through where data is readily available, versus where it’s trapped in paper, spreadsheets or isolated automation, will ensure the plan can deliver on the purpose.

Planning at the outset of investing in digitalisation, but some food manufacturers may will have undoubtedly already rushed into digitalisation in years past. For businesses with some digital or automation technologies in place, one of the most valuable things to do is review the lay of the existing digital landscape. The easiest approach to doing this is to apply the ‘three Rs’ to your existing data: reduce systems overlap, reuse data and recycle data.

Reducing data collection system overlap not only makes it easier for managers to identify the source of a specific data set, it also streamlines costs. Why have a downtime system collecting machine event data, a yield analysis system collecting overlapping data and a work in progress tracking system that is separate to both of those? Having three systems collecting fundamentally the same data means duplicated configuration and deployment costs, as well as possible conflict over which one holds the ‘truth’.

An effective data and digitalisation strategy should also aim to use collected data in various calculations to produce several insights. For example, the downtime event data collected for OEE calculations may be part of what’s needed to solve a quality problem. The energy and water data collected for sustainability reporting may hold the key to real savings opportunities. Wherever there is a connection to a data source, managers should think of ways to make sure that a data point only needs to be collected once in order to be used many times.

Finally, offline analysis tools and some of the new analytics packages on the market could mean that old data offers recurring value as a firm chases finer and finer points of improvement. So, it’s important to set up a data management approach and data management platforms that can give you the option of making repeated use of data.

Digitalisation projects can lead to more innovative and effective ways of working for food manufacturers, but they rely on careful planning and strategic implementation. By giving full consideration to the goals to be reached or how data is used within a site, food businesses can ensure their systems are always effectively aligned with their goals.

The food and beverage manufacturing industry is one of narrow margins, high demand and strict regulatory requirements. As such, it’s easy to understand why many manufacturers are turning to higher levels of automation and digital technologies to meet an ever-growing and ever-changing demand from consumers. And as interest around Industry 4.0 and the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has grown, more senior managers at food businesses are considering digitally transforming operations. 

However, the trouble with concepts such as Industry 4.0 is that they are ambiguous. IIoT, for example, includes everything from automatic process control and improved data collection to advanced data analysis and virtual reality (VR) supported maintenance. There are lots of potential benefits offered by this cornucopia of technologies, but they are often too conceptual for most food manufacturers to truly grasp.  

Instead, we must look at the technologies that can offer tangible value to manufacturers. For many, control systems and process automation are the prime areas for development. In fact, a report published by the Food and Drink Federation found that manufacturing process automation was the second biggest focus area for innovation by food manufacturers, with 73 per cent of manufacturers investing in this area. 

Automation is of particular interest for food manufacturers as it offers a meaningful way to achieve the benefits promised by the IIoT. For example, a fourth-generation HMI/SCADA software can oversee and control certain connected processes. As part of a larger networked automation platform — for example, GE Digital’s Predix — this software could contribute to the effective deployment of a smart predictive maintenance program. 

With such a program, food manufacturers can minimise downtime by having a system in place to monitor equipment health and automate certain maintenance tasks in a proactive, predictive manner. However, this can only happen if a manufacturer has suitable quantities of relevant operational data. This comes back to food plant managers ensuring they take the right first steps in their automation journey. 

The first steps 

For food manufacturers making their first moves into modern automation systems, the first step should always be to identify why managers want to automate. This involves developing what we refer to as a technology adoption profile. 

There are two main profiles: the innovator, who wants to experiment and find new ways of operating and developing better products, and the “price-sensitive purchaser”, who has the main aim of reducing downtime, minimising operating expense and maximising margins by making operations as efficient as possible. This profile influences the types of technology that you should invest in as a first step into process improvement. 

Once a manager determines what they want to achieve, the first port of call should be to ensure a system is in place that can collect and store an effective amount of data from machines, sensors and systems. This is where Historian software proves invaluable.  

For food businesses, Historian software ticks the right boxes for traceability and for process management and improvement, because it stores accurate operation and production data. This data should form the basis of any effective automation strategy, as plant managers can easily identify the key areas that require optimisation or improvement. 

Crucially, Historian systems don’t require substantial changes to an existing system configuration; they simply slot into existing technology infrastructure, connecting easily to a wide range of data collection and reporting tools. Some best-in-class Historian systems, such as GE Digital’s Historian, make integration even easier via fast software installation and integration. 

Historically, the challenge here has been one of price. Currently, Historian software is typically built around a model where manufacturers pay upfront for an amount of tags, irrespective of whether they are actively analysed or even used at all. The result is that medium to large size enterprises are paying high costs for 10,000 tags, when they might only need and use 400. Meanwhile, smaller companies are being priced out. 

To tackle this, Novotek has teamed up with GE Digital to provide Enterprise Historian software using a subscription-based model, making the system affordable to food manufacturers of all sizes. With this model, users can store data is several tags but only pay for the tags that they analyse, which reduces the barrier to entry for digitalisation and allows managers to retroactively analyse collected data. 

This model helps food manufacturers in remaining competitive. Not only does the insight provided by the Historian software allow for greater analysis and improvement of processes, but plant managers can attain this without paying over the odds. From here, food manufacturers can determine how their automation journey progresses — whether it’s down the route of innovation or improved overall equipment effectiveness. 

Whenever a new trend comes along in the food industry, customer demand peaks quickly and manufacturers must adapt rapidly. This often means modifying recipes, recalibrating system settings and adjusting the production schedule. However, the plant manager still has the same facilities and manpower. This makes adapting to demand a challenge and often creates problems.

Plants must operate at optimum efficiency, with minimal downtime to ensure that the production can meet the output required by the customer. Production needs to be closely monitored and scheduled, otherwise the required amount of product will simply not be produced.

Currently, many plant managers use Excel spreadsheets to schedule production. However, with increased digitalisation across the whole plant, it seems illogical to base the production schedules on a manually created process that is open to human error and takes up valuable time.

Managing production schedules is almost like a puzzle. The plant manager must decide which product should be produced first and how much of each product to manufacture to meet the customer’s needs. While it could take the operator an hour to go through the different possibilities for production scheduling to find the optimum output, some production scheduling tools can work through the different options within a minute.

By using a digital scheduling tool, not only will the plant manager reduce the time taken to work out a schedule for the plant’s production, they will have a better overview of the plant.

Visualisation

GE Digital’s ROB-EX production scheduling tool has a visually simple dashboard that allows the involved managers to visualise the different production routes, stages in production, the workload and material consumption. Visual aids, such as different colours for different statuses, helps management to have a better understanding at a glance of how they are producing, which choices they should make and what is going on in the plant.

A scheduling tool like this should be connected with the enterprise resource planning (ERP) or supply chain management (SCM) system. ROB-EX has standard connectors for major ERP and SCM suppliers such as VISMA and SAP, so it can be easily integrated into an existing system, rather than creating additional workload for management.  

The scheduling tool allows plant managers to generate possibilities about what production needs to be take place and what materials are needed for the processes. This allows production to be managed in the most resource and time efficient manner.

Downtime

Downtime is a big problem in the food industry and even more so for manufacturers that are under increased pressure to produce products to tight deadlines. Any bottlenecks in production due to missing materials or poorly planned schedules can lead to the food manufacturer failing to meet the customer’s deadline.

An effective scheduling tool will immediately show any bottlenecks in resources, capacity or raw material. This should then be actionable data for the plant manager, who is able to optimize their production plan continuously, rather than acting reactively after the production has stopped.

Contamination

As anyone involved in the food production industry will know, contamination is a serious concern. Nuts, for example, have been identified by the EU as one of the most common ingredients causing food allergies and intolerances. Production therefore needs to be planned carefully to allow for the deep cleaning procedures to take place between the production of nut based products and nut free products.

While it can be difficult for the operator to balance the production schedule with concerns about contamination, a scheduling tool can take heed of the allergens contained within different products. It will then schedule production with this in mind.

For example, products containing peanuts would be produced at the end of a shift pattern, allowing production to stop as scheduled for the cleaning to take place, rather than having to stop production to clean in the middle of a shift. Production schedules are quite difficult to manage because of the huge amounts of products that often need to be produced, combined with the fluctuating demand and short lead times.

Vegetarian demand

Novotek has worked with one of the Netherland’s largest producers of vegetarian meat. The meat substitutes market is projected to grow at 6.8 per cent annually and reach $6.3 billion in 2023, so demand is high in this industry.

Interest was also sparked when the French Government banned the use of phrases such as vegetarian sausages or vegetarian burgers to describe meat substitute products. This also increased production for Novotek’s customer by 25 per cent.

The company recently invested in the ROB-EX scheduling tool to help their growth of up to 10 to 20 per cent every year. The company is having to produce a greater variety and volume of products with the same amount of people and equipment as before.

The manufacturer therefore approached Novotek with the need to streamline its processes. While they were unsure as to what tool would help them do this, Novotek consulted with senior leaders from the plant to identify that a planning and scheduling tool would help them to achieve their goals.

For this company, investing in a scheduling tool was relatively inexpensive and could be easily integrated with their existing IT- and forecasting systems. However, it allowed them to move away from manually planning production on a spreadsheet, to a better managed automated system. The system proposes the ideal production schedule from which the planner easily can choose.

This removed the need to manually decide what to produce at what time. This increased efficiency and reduced downtime will allow the company to meet the needs of its customers in line with the growth of the vegetarian food market.

This is just one example of a customer in a growing sector of the food industry where a scheduling tool allows them to better manage production to meet their customer’s targets. While growth in a market can be an opportunity for food manufacturers, if they are using old, manual systems, it can put too much pressure on planners and operators and lead to mistakes in planning production. By automating scheduling, plant managers can ensure that their production is planned correctly and any potential issues are resolved before they arise. Edible algae is one trend that we wouldn’t have predicted several years ago, so we can only predict what the new food trends will be in years to come. With this in mind, plant managers should consider whether their current production scheduling system is up to task, and if an automated system would allow them to cope with a sudden increase in demand.

Currently, many food and beverage companies solely rely on manual paper checks for their traceability procedures. Data is collected manually by the workers, which is then collated. The files are then collected and stored in offices, which must be sorted through in the event of a regulatory inspection or a recall.

Manually collecting vital information like this can have an impact on the accuracy of the information and the speed at which it can be collected. However, European companies in the food and beverage industry are bound to laws that mean their traceability procedures must be extremely tight to avoid any prosecution or fines.

All countries in the EU are bound by the General Food Law of 2002 to ensure that food safety is maintained for all European consumers. The law defines traceability as the ability to trace and follow food, feed and ingredients through all stages of production, processing and distribution.

When food or feed is found to be unsafe, companies are under obligation to withdraw or recall the product. They must also notify the national authorities who can then monitor where the product may have spread to and whether further action should be taken. Otherwise, a contaminated feed could have wide reaching consequences across the European food supply chain.

To comply with this regulation, companies must have traceability systems in place that allow them to identify where their products have come from and where they are going to. They must do this quickly to reduce the spread of contaminated product and the amount of product recalled, affecting the supply chain.

It is almost inevitable that at some point in the food chain, mistakes will be made, and contaminated products may enter production. However, to minimise the disruption to their business, food manufacturers can invest in automated traceability systems. Then, if a contaminated product is found, the batches that it has been in contact with are traceable.

To create an effective web of traceability records, data should be collected from the three different stages of food production. Manufacturers can use PLCs and HMIs to collect the data. Emerson Automation’s PACSystems range of control systems are easily integrated into existing systems, meaning that the benefits of improved traceability are not outweighed by a huge cost to integrate the new products.

In the first stage, all raw materials should be easily identified by the batch and date code, meaning they are tracked as soon as they come into the factory. Then, as the raw material is processed, manufacturers should note the number of units produced and the amount of any waste product. Finally, the third stage, where the product is sent to customers, is one of the easiest to keep traceability records of, as most businesses keep detailed records of orders and their recipients.

By feeding the data collected along the production line into a MES system, the plant manager can view all of this traceability information at a glance. In the event of a recall, the plant manager can then share this information with the relevant authorities quickly, without having to track down missing data, minimising the disruption to the plant.

Not only does improving traceability systems help the manufacturer in the unfortunate event of a recall, it also helps the businesses’ transparency. Novotek has previously worked with a Dutch milk producer where GE Digital’s Historian application allowed the company to improve its transparency to its customers. As the brand promoted itself in organic retailer stores, proving the origin of the milk was important to the success of the brand, meaning the producer had to invest in an improved traceability system. Food scandals don’t look likely to disappear anytime soon, but by investing in better control systems to improve traceability, food manufacturers can reduce the effect of the scandals on their business. Just as professional gardeners wouldn’t weed their gardens with inadequate tools, food manufacturers must not rely on out-dated manual collection methods. By carrying out traceability procedures using connected, automated systems, food manufacturers can protect themselves as much as possible against scandals.