Automation in Food Processing Control Systems

Running head: CONTROL SYSTEMS
[Author Name(s), First M. Last, Omit Titles and Degrees]
[Institutional Affiliation(s)]

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CONTROL SYSTEMS
Automation in food processing control systems
Introduction
The rate of adoption of industrial automation in the food industry has been recorded to
take shape at relatively lower rates in comparison to the other industries, and manual handling
and assembling of food tend to have wide coverage. This is attributed to the fact that food
products have a diverse range of features among them fruits, vegetables and meat which thus call
for more individualized handling unit basis. This, in turn, calls for high levels of flexibility in the
industrial automation of the food industry in comparison to other mature industries. Factoring in
the diversity in the food industry, it becomes a challenge to establish a generic automation
solution as a result of the biological changes in the shape and size of raw materials in as much as
some of the features such as labeling, quality control, palletizing and packaging are generic in
the production process.
Process control diagram (Kostaropoulos, 2015)

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CONTROL SYSTEMS
Reasons for automation of food processing
Despite the numerous hiccups associated with automation in the food industry, it still
becomes essential to automate the industry (Hitzmann, 2017, p. 176). The need to automate food
industry has been necessitated by the goal to achieve competitive advantage requirements which
are only achievable through improved quality of food and improved productivity. Through
automation in food processing, efficiency in the flow of work and use of labor is achieved and
thus a higher efficiency in the allocation of resources. Bearing the inefficiency, tedious and
inconsistent nature of human visual inspection, a need to develop more complex, reliable and
quality assuring technology was needed. Such technologies as computer vision have enhanced
automatic inspections of food products thereby enhancing higher levels of accuracy and
consistency in the evaluation of the food quality (Kostaropoulos, 2015, p. 596). Through food
automation, it has been able to collect, store and track data of all the events and processes in food
production operations which then allow the manufacturers to ascertain compliance with the
environmental and food hygiene provisions and regulations.
Food processing industries have been moved to increased automation dues to the rise in
the demand for higher quality products and the flexibility in sharing equipment used in the
manufacturing process among other factors. In response to these rising demands, the control
system vendors have managed to respond to the situations through the provision of the
appropriate hardware and modular software capability to give the process engineer an
opportunity to focus on the strategy of process control as opposed to concentrating on the control
system design (Lamb, 2013, p. 313). Still, through the development of sensors that can be used
in the measurement of the subjective and quality features among them smell and taste new vistas
have provided in automation application in the food processing industry.