How can innovation solve and prevent problems in production?
For any food and beverage producer, minimising downtime and optimising productivity are essential success factors. There are many ways to do both, and with innovations and advances in technology, solutions and services that can solve and prevent problems are more accessible than ever. So how can you use technology to help your operations run smoothly?
In order to know how innovations and new technology can potentially help your operations, you need to know what’s available, and what’s on the horizon. Each and every part of your plant could be affected in a positive way, so it’s up to you to decide where changes could make the most positive impact. The ideal things to look for are if a solution can either help you to solve problems quicker, or help you avoid problems altogether. Let’s take a look at a few examples.
Ensuring your equipment is always running smoothly will help keep downtime to a minimum, but what’s the optimal way to do this? Machinery must be checked at regular maintenance intervals which allows for issues to be resolved in a timely manner, but thanks to innovations in sensors and connectivity, it’s possible to be even more proactive in identifying potential problems.
By equipping sensors, in conjunction with the right software, it’s possible to get constant updates on the health and status of your processing equipment. The data collected can be used and interpreted by experts at the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) to help you to identify where you can potentially optimise processes, and the sensors can also detect potential issues before they become bigger problems that halt production.
This means that in addition to time-based preventive maintenance, you can further increase reliability and minimise downtime by proactively managing the health of your assets, which in turn helps you to optimise your operational uptime.
Asset Health Monitoring from Tetra Pak can help with all of this and more, as it can be set up to continually monitor crucial functions like cutting and sealing, while helping to improve process control while minimising reliance on operator competence. We can also use insights from the data to help you reduce utilities consumption, and the data and connectivity can also enable faster, more efficient troubleshooting.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been around in various forms for a long time, but its capabilities are rapidly expanding, and if it’s used in the right way, it can help any food and beverage producer in a variety of ways.
In fact, it can be used at every step of the value chain. Generative AI, for example, can be used for inspiration when it comes to new products and recipes, or it can be used to condense a trend report to save time when getting the information you need to take the next step.
It can also be used to help optimise supply chains, as it’s possible to program models that adapt to challenges and offer solutions, helping secure a more reliable way of working. It can even be used to support product testing and marketing initiatives.
AI is a flexible, powerful tool that can be used to support your business, as long as it’s used in the right way. It’s essential to analyse its weaknesses as well as its strengths, and it’s still constantly evolving and developing, but it can be a valuable tool.
Sometimes, all it takes to solve a problem is a simple conversation. But what happens when the person who has that information doesn’t speak the same language? Or if the help you need is thousands of miles away?
Technology has helped trivialise any distance, and remote support is one thing that can help you keep operations running smoothly – with a simple video call, you can be guided through the action you need to take on a certain piece of equipment without having to wait for an engineer.
However, language can be a barrier. Thankfully, as translation tools continue to improve, this is becoming less and less of a problem. Text-to-text translation is already straightforward, with speech-to-text also more reliable than ever. Even more exciting is the development of speech-to-speech translation, which will allow seamless conversation with anyone, anywhere in the world, ensuring the best possible help for you and your operations.
This makes getting the help required more accessible than ever before, and will allow experts to share their knowledge with anyone that needs it, which can again help to optimise operations and prevent problems.
Access to expertise is essential for any operation, but what if you could educate your own experts, in-house? Consistent training and on-the-job learning are major contributors to long-term success, and the more you can solve without engaging external help, the more efficient your operations will be. Intuitive digital learning platforms can help to increase the level of expertise within your business, while ensuring that knowledge is accessible anytime, anywhere.
It can be a challenge to know which innovations to invest in, to understand which will work best for your business, and to find the right solutions provider to collaborate with. At Tetra Pak, we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of innovation, and we are developing solutions constantly that leverage the latest technology to help you prevent and solve problems.
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