Gazing into Automation's Crystal Ball
Reprinted with permission from Food Engineering
www.foodengineeringmag.com
A number of professionals involved in food and beverage automation were asked to channel their inner Alvin Toffler to predict technology’s impact on the food plant of tomorrow. Some of their thoughts:
Today’s consumer electronics is a harbinger of what we’ll see in manufacturing in seven years. Instead of technical training, operators and maintenance will access apps to walk them through machine procedures.
—John Kowal, market development manager, B&R Automation
New engineers are pure programmers, and they’re used to programming in C#, VB.net and other languages. These tools are very different from the ladder logic that electrical engineers use in existing controls. Controls suppliers are going to have to adapt.
—Axel Andersson, product manager, Tetra Pak Inc.
Limited resources in China, India, Latin America and other developing markets will drive deployment of innovative manufacturing technologies. After they are proven, manufacturers in industrialized nations will adopt them.
—John Blanchard, research director, ARC Advisory Group
With drag-and-drop control logic available, coupled with plug-in sensor and control instruments pushing data over a network, why is the PLC necessary? Why can’t this capability exist in “the cloud,” with the software and logic delivered as needed, just like electricity and water?
—Jack Roper, controls systems design manager, POWER Engineers Inc.
To address supply-chain issues, manufacturers are improving capacity firepower with more regional production; think of it as a line of rollers. That lends itself to a different type of rules-based automation to ensure better compliance and more consistency between locations.
—Walt Staehle, vice president-food & beverage group, Siemens Industry
The ERP system is the last bastion of IT. Mid-level IT has been outsourced, and there aren’t many core IT professionals still in place in food plants. Integration is becoming plug and play.
—Tim Clark, director-automation services, Stellar
The data-collection needs of food safety will drive automation. Instead of approaching automation as a labor-replacement tool, manufacturers will rely on automation to track process variables beyond time and temperature.
—Phil Sheridan, electrical department manager, POWER Engineers Inc.
Today, nobody accounts for the water and energy that went into making a given product. The food plant of the future’s bill of materials is going to have a line item for energy.
—Dean Ford, director-enterprise integration, Maverick Technologies
Some food companies are using OEE data to drive capital investments and how people are trained and perform their jobs.
—Rusty Steele, marketing & business development, food & beverage, Schneider Electric
Compared to hardwired Ethernet, wireless is more secure, with 260-bit encryption. As people become comfortable with wireless, it will become the supervisory control technology in plants.
—Bill Wotruba, director-networking & connectivity, Belden Inc
