Food automation continues to play an important role in the food industry, addressing essential levels of quality control, labor shortages, production speed, and overall profitability. Food automation can reap many benefits. Food automation not only improves line efficiencies but also can potentially increase sales and bottom-line profit. Food processing is a labor-intensive process, resulting in a variety of errors, and thus, there is increasing adoption of automation in the food industry. Food automation improves overall product quality, saves labor charges, as well as overall efficiency of the facility.
Automated equipment makes it easy to standardize the food production process. Restaurants leverage automation to create efficiency and improve productivity for everything from flipping hamburgers to frying chicken. Moreover, food automation helps to maintain standardization and quality of food, thereby helping in protect the brand value of food products. Thus, small or large-scale players are increasingly adopting automation to leverage its benefits, owing to the growing demand for food safety, rapid technological advancements, and stringent regulations regarding the quality and safety of food and beverage products.
For example, in the United States, food automation machinery is required to meet the stringent criteria enforced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Moreover, the demand for food automation is increasing to meet the growing demand for food across the globe. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, the world population of 9.1 billion people in 2050 would require raising overall food production by some 70% between 2005/07 and 2050.
The primary goal of food automation is to develop machines that facilitate and speed up the food-making process by utilizing different strategies that produce efficient food handling without causing any damage to the quality of the products. Automation helps reduce the cycle time of making a product, thus enabling manufacturers to make more and better products in a shorter time. This will be particularly significant for beverage manufacturing.