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COVID-19 Provides a Push for Digital Innovation

As food and beverage manufacturers scramble to keep workers safe and shelves stocked, many have moved forward with automation and digital transformation initiatives that might have only been on the radar before the pandemic.

With demands caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, West Liberty Foods had to shift more of its production from bulk food service packages to smaller retail packages for consumers.
With demands caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, West Liberty Foods had to shift more of its production from bulk food service packages to smaller retail packages for consumers.
West Liberty Foods

Digital transformation has long been on a forward trajectory, but now more than ever, food and beverage manufacturers are finding it essential to make the leap. After a brief pause as companies stopped to figure out their next moves, the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a surge of activity on that front.

With demands caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, West Liberty Foods had to shift more of its production from bulk food service packages to smaller retail packages for consumers.With demands caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, West Liberty Foods had to shift more of its production from bulk food service packages to smaller retail packages for consumers.West Liberty FoodsFood and beverage manufacturers, considered essential, have had to figure out how to continue operating while keeping their workers safe. Connecting them remotely has been instrumental. “Getting people off-site who didn’t need to be there was a high priority,” notes Bob Argyle, chief customer officer at Leading2Lean (L2L). “Anybody that didn’t need to be hands on needed to work from home if they could.”

The sector has also been hit hard by changes in consumer demand—as service businesses dipped, a major burden was put on grocers to get products to the shelves. A supply chain shaken by the pandemic is looking for resiliency.

Acceleration into automation

The pandemic has kicked many digital transformation journeys into high gear. “It is speeding up digital transformation initiatives that are out there,” says Mick Mancuso, director of Connected Enterprise operations for Rockwell Automation, speaking from a socially distanced Automation Fair At Home. “We saw a little bit of a pause as the outbreak was hitting the U.S. and other parts of the world, but now we’ve only seen acceleration, especially in certain industries.”

Not to say that increased levels of automation were not already on the horizon—but in many cases, the COVID-19 pandemic has put the pedal to the metal. “It’s been on their technology horizon, but COVID has kind of pushed that requirement on them more,” says Vikram Mankar, principal product manager for plant applications at GE Digital, of food and beverage customers.

>>Download Trends in Adoption of Remote Access: Moving Forward During COVID-19, a free report from PMMI Business Intelligence that captures participants’ perspectives on how to keep production lines running smoothly and increase uptime during a time when service technicians are unable to enter their plants.

Digital transformation brings with it a wealth of technologies that help improve operations. “The pandemic has greatly accelerated the need for companies to complete their Industry 4.0 transformations with solutions that allow them to have more flexibility, visibility and efficiency in their operations,” notes Christine Boles, vice president of the IoT Group and general manager of the Industrial Solutions Division at Intel. The adoption of solutions that help to address that need—artificial intelligence, machine learning, machine vision, and advanced analytics—will continue to accelerate as well, she adds.

People who need people

A key challenge that food and beverage manufacturers have faced since COVID-19 started is a lack of manpower. This became even more pressing as guidelines were passed down for keeping plant floor operators safe. “It caught food and beverage and certainly CPG companies off guard,” Mankar says. “They had to figure out—how do we work in this new COVID world?”

Social distancing has been a significant component of the new workplace, and it manifests itself in a number of ways, such as revised workflows, personal tags, remote work, and more. “The pandemic has changed a lot of things for us,” says Sujeet Chand, senior vice president and CTO for Rockwell Automation. “For example, now we talk about social distancing in the manufacturing environment, which we’ve never discussed in the past.”

Working from home has become surprisingly prevalent for an industry that requires so much hands-on operation. “More and more companies want to securely connect their remote workers. It’s important to be able to connect people who maybe have to work from home—whether IT or operations or engineering people,” Mancuso says. “You can connect back in to manufacturing and still help run manufacturing even though you might be working from home.”

>>Hear from experts from around industry about All Things Remote, a special Jumpstart session at PACK EXPO Connects, available on demand through March 31. Interviews include how General Mills commissioned equipment remotely during the pandemic.

Granted, many food manufacturers need quite a number of their workers to be on-site to keep production running. But the pandemic provides a push to realize the benefits of providing some employees with remote access and the ability to do their work from home. “If you’re not touching or running the equipment, or if you’re running non-critical operations, we’re certainly seeing that,” Mankar says.

Early on in the pandemic, GE Digital began offering free web-based remote monitoring and control licenses to its industrial human-machine interface (HMI) and supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software customers. With workers in a range of industries being asked to work remotely to slow the spread of the coronavirus, GE Digital empowered that through remote licenses to its iFix and Cimplicity customers.

“By enabling mobile workers, industrial companies are better able to ensure the safety of their workers while continuing to serve their customers,” said Matthew Wells, vice president of product management for GE Digital, in a statement last March.

Through sheer necessity, many plants—food and beverage included—have had to turn to remote connectivity to get new equipment tested and commissioned as well, and to provide monitoring and troubleshooting on existing equipment.

Though there are aspects of in-person testing and commissioning that will likely be missed, not a lot of companies are missing the time and resources that were typically spent flying to a customer site and completing an equipment install. “We just had an installation, and it took us five days vs. four weeks for qualification,” Mankar notes. “That’s the positive side. You don’t have to have people go to the site to do this now. Whatever limited FATs you need to do on site, you can now do in a shorter amount of time.”

Already ready

Manufacturers that were previously well on their digital journey have been in a better position to weather the COVID storm.

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