Martin Walder explores how the future of the factory floor is set to become more connected and efficient thanks to ultra-high performance motion and robotic controllers and IIoT technologies.

The food and beverage industry has been revolutionised by automation. Specifically, cheaper, more capable and flexible technologies have accelerated the growth of automated production facilities across the world.

The adoption of automated picking and packaging machines have become staple to ensuring production deadlines are met, while also improving the consistency and quality of the product.

As we enter a new age of automation and smart factories, the digitisation of packaging halls will be essential for the industry to survive.

The benefits that automation and digitisation have proven, outweigh the negatives. They ultimately, enable manufacturers to respond with new products, packaging formats and materials to meet the changing demands of clients.

Not only this, they also have the ability of optimising operational activity by reducing the number of manual interactions to improve speed, run time and dependability, while reducing maintenance costs.

However, we have to remember the pivotal role that humans hold in collaboration with machines that makes production processes successful.

One thing is certain. In the age of smart factories, manufacturers need to create the perfect mixture of automation, robotics and IIoT. Once this has been realised, efficiency and resilience will become the norm and manufacturers will be able to survive in this competitive market.

End of the line for PLCs and the emergence of Robotics
The traditional Programmable Logic Controller (PLC), with the odd robot or two, has dominated the global control landscape across food and beverage plants for the past 20 years in the picking and packaging arena.

However, more recently, as the need for multi-robot picking lines has ballooned, traditional PLC-based control architectures are increasingly being replaced by a new generation of ultra-high-performance motion and robotic controllers, that also have PLC sequence capability.