Kieran Bennett, industry manager for food, beverage, chemical and petrochemical at Burkert looks at the importance of process accuracy and how it can be achieved with innovative flowmeter technology.

With production data driving the digital era, food safety specialist Fortress Technology reviews how, at the push of a button, automated data collection and record keeping provides valuable insight that powers decision-making and operational effectiveness on food processing lines.

Many industrial manufacturing processes will result in the production of acidic waste streams. Where these undergo on site treatment, they are likely to require neutralisation before discharge, in order to comply with a discharge consent, as the experts at OMEX Environmental explain.

Consumer habits are changing, and thus so are the requirements of the process manufacturing industries. Here, Bradley McEwan, business development manager at Beckhoff UK, discusses how software and modular hardware enables easy integration of technologies, like robotics and vision, that were once considered ‘standalone’.

Maintaining hygiene is vital in food packaging machinery, and it’s important that the approach to achieve it minimises downtime to maintain productivity. Gerard Bush, engineer at motion specialist INMOCO, discusses hygienic design and servo systems for food packaging machinery.

Beckhoff UK was a gold sponsor at LabVIEW technical event GDevCON. Here, technical support engineer Chris Knight explains the vital function that inputs and outputs (I/O) communication plays in connecting systems, exchanging data and ensuring efficient automation.

With an aging workforce and a lack of younger people entering the industry, it’s clear that the UK’s manufacturing sector will face an ongoing shortage of workers. Embracing technologies like generative AI could go some way in overcoming it, as Stephen Hayes, managing director of Beckhoff UK explains.

As the food supply chain undergoes modernisation and calls for heightened transparency in food safety grow louder, food manufacturers find themselves facing the need to embrace digitalisation. According to Ian Scott-Mance, technology manager at Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection, rather than viewing this as a challenge, they should perceive it as a strategic opportunity to unlock significant value for their businesses.

Food processing plants typically run their equipment for 16 to 20 hours a day, yet a Forbes report claims that manufacturers face an average of 15 hours downtime per week. Tom Cash, director of Siemens parts supplier, Foxmere, explains how the role of condition-based maintenance (CBM) helps maintenance engineers recognise gross defects before catastrophe strikes.

For manufacturers, keeping a close eye on their Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) numbers, the last thing they want is unscheduled downtime messing things up. Kati Hope, global account manager of Mettler-Toledo Product Inspection, shares information on how picking the right product inspection system can be a game-changer for keeping the production line humming and decreasing spend for food manufacturers.