Articles and News

Working with OBG, Ithaca Beer Co. upgraded to a semi-automated brewing process based on the FactoryTalk Craft Brew solution from Rockwell Automation. The pre-configured solution offers control to customize and automate a craft brewhouse. And it is pre-engineered, -programmed, -tested and -validated, significantly reducing commissioning and startup time.

By Thomas R. Cutler Only when a small manufacturer has a grasp on operation elements can the promise of lean manufacturing and continuous process improvement be realized

By Darcy Simonis, ABB While Bitcoin itself has divided many and attracted criticism, the technology that it is built upon, the blockchain, has garnered significant interest due to its promise of immutable digital record-keeping. This article explains why the emerging technology stores the key to greater traceability and reduced food wastage.

By Darcy Simonis, ABB Food and Beverage Gourmet food or haute cuisine is expected in high-end restaurants.Recently this style of cuisine has started to feed into daily cuisine choices, with more processed foods going gourmet. This article explains how manufacturers can get on board with this new trend.

By Darcy Simonis, ABB Food and Beverage Vertical farming is the process of food being produced in vertically stacked layers, instead of on a single level such as in a field or greenhouse. The layers are commonly integrated into urban structures like skyscrapers, shipping containers and repurposed warehouses.

By Darcy Simonis, ABB Food and Beverage While many of us are cutting animal products from out diets, it is vital the manufacturers adapt and work closely with their customers to develop a transparent, secure and efficient process.

By Darcy Simonis, ABB This article discusses how food manufacturers can help reduce consumer food waste due to label confusion.

By Jonathan Wilkins, EU Automation This article explains how the future of food manufacturing will facilitate the same level of customization, automatically.

By Darcy Simonis, ABB Food and beverage production requires a large range of temperatures. This means that plants must have effective cooling systems to deal with the excess heat. Removing the excess heat from the system requires a cooling tower, however, traditional designs require frequent maintenance

Sightline Process Control is a company specializing in 3D color vision and automated inspection systems for the food production process.

The financial situation of the average automation engineer got a nice boost in 2018. With the need for experienced professionals still growing, we anticipate the demand to remain strong for engineers for the foreseeable future, with a great deal of opportunity for young graduates and those who are interested in a STEM career.

For manufacturers, the stakes have never been higher. Under FSMA regulations, failure to implement an effective supply chain risk management program could subject food companies and their officers to significant liability and even criminal charges.

By Darcy Simonis, ABB Anyone who uses social media will know how prevalent pictures of food are. This article looks at how the impact of social media is changing the priorities of food and beverage managers.

By Gernut van Laak, Group Automation Solutions Leader, ABB Food and Beverage The need for factory maintenance often goes unnoticed. This article explains how plant managers can budget for maintenance and ensure optimum efficiency for all processes.

By Dominique Stucki, ABB Control Technology There was widespread panic across Europe in mid-2017 when millions of eggs were recalled due to being contaminated with Fipronil — a highly toxic insecticide that is banned in the EU.

By Robert Glass, ABB Digitalization encompasses a transformation in the way industrial environments work. For the food and beverage industry, this means companies can better comply with legislation through a transformation in areas including connectivity, smart sensors, traceability, cloud computing and monitoring.

The Dematic Meat Buffer storage and handling solution will work to provide better visibility of product flow and accuracy at the meat processing facility.

Sinn’s core focus will be helping companies, leveraging the MonarchFx ecosystem, to build customer-centric fulfillment systems.

The robotic system will be used to piece pick inventory items for retail store replenishment using a “goods-to-robot” configuration. The order fulfillment system will support replenishment of approximately 50 retail stores and is scheduled to start up during the 2nd quarter of 2019 in a new distribution center building.

The first Compac product resulting from this partnership is Smartline, which is built on Wonderware by AVEVA. Smartline features an operational dashboard for visualisation of line performance and a user interface designed to facilitate line control for packhouses of all sizes.