The food and beverage industry is one of rapid change and growth. Shifts in consumer behavior, the demand for new and exciting products in the marketplace, and the increased emphasis on cleanliness and food safety and sanitation provide significant challenges for food and beverage producers in the creation of a flexible automation framework that can balance the uncertainties of today’s global landscape.
Top Challenges For Food and Beverage Processors
> How to Identify the Right Industrial Enclosures for Food and Beverage Production
> How to Optimize Climate Control Systems for Powerful, Targeted Cooling
> How to Efficiently Integrate Panel and Enclosure Modifications
> How to Rethink Your Power Distribution Systems
> How to Enhance Your Food and Beverage Automation Solutions
What further complicates food and beverage production is the high degree of customization necessary with industrial enclosure, climate control, and power distribution systems due to the variances in food safety and sanitation practices associated with the three hygienic zones of production.
Keeping an ear to the ground on consumer behaviors and trends is critical for manufacturers in any industry, and this is especially true in the food and beverage industry where buying habits can be personal and the rationale behind purchases specific and unique. Our updated food and beverage consumer insight report – published in May 2022 — details how consumers feel about food safety and sanitation protocols in production facilities during the last year, and the variables that account for these attitudes.
Download the updated report to learn more
Similarly, food and beverage producers need powerful, precise, and targeted climate control units to help ensure health and safety protocols of the products on the facility floor. While Industry 4.0 and IIoT have revolutionized the processes in modern manufacturing, the struggle for food and beverage producers today is choosing the right solution for the right job.
With decades of field-proven expertise in the food and beverage industrial automation space, Rittal’s industrial enclosures, climate control units, busbar power distribution systems, and modification solutions have set the bar for excellence in design and engineering to help food and beverage manufacturers like you discover a simplified solution to get the job done.
How to Identify the Right Industrial Enclosures for Food and Beverage Production
For today’s food and beverage producers, the consideration for the right industrial enclosures boils down to the ability of the enclosure to withstand regular, intense washdowns with powerful cleaning agents and the capacity of the enclosure to be easily integrated into production facilities with limitations on size and space.
In addition, the flexibility of panel configuration, wiring and cable management, power distribution systems, and ease of installation are top-tier priorities given the strict food safety and sanitation requirements of the three hygienic zones in production facilities.
What’s more, producers must be able to quickly pivot based on consumer demand, supply chain instability, or labor shortages. This means food and beverage producers need industrial enclosures, junction boxes, and accessories designed and engineered specifically for use in the food and beverage space.
Rittal’s hygienic design enclosures and accessories features slope-top enclosure designs to prevent pooling and IP 66 enclosure ratings for superior protection along with a variety of construction materials to withstand high-intensity washdowns in harsh production spaces. The Hygienic Design line also includes small and compact enclosures for deploying in facilities where space is limited and unique mounting positions are required.
How do you know which industrial enclosure is right for your food and beverage facility? How do you choose the right industrial enclosure for each hygienic zone to help ensure a sanitary environment and optimized production processes? The right enclosure will help save you time, money, and resources, and our webinar will help you identify the ideal enclosure for your food and beverage factory to help create an efficient, cost-effective automation infrastructure.
Watch this on-demand webinar to learn more.
How to Optimize Climate Control Systems for Powerful, Targeted Cooling
Food and beverage production pivots on temperature control. Whether it’s ensuring production environments maintain consistent temperatures to prevent product spoilage for enhanced food safety or providing targeted cooling for peak performance of the electronics and controls that drive production processes, optimized climate control units are a mission-critical consideration for production plants.
It’s a tough task, but with a climate control unit engineered under Industry 4.0 and IIoT principles, food and beverage producers can not only deploy consistent, targeted cooling in a variety of food and beverage applications, but they can also harness the power of real-time monitoring, remote monitoring, network notifications, and alerts to create a more proactive climate control framework.
With a state-of-the-art climate control unit like Blue e+, Blue e+ S, TopTherm cooling units, and more, producers can engineer targeted cooling outputs where cooling is needed most with an eye toward reducing energy costs and decreasing the carbon footprint of your food and beverage facility. New enclosure cooling technology can help to achieve carbon reduction and save 1 ton of carbon per year, the equivalent absorbed by over 80 beech trees.
Our team of expert climate specialists can also help you understand the health and viability of your existing climate control units with a climate efficiency analysis, and our climate inventory webinar provides a behind-the-scenes look at what our climate experts look for when conducting an efficiency analysis to help you better understand the process from start to finish.
The food and beverage industry is at a crossroads: How to reduce your carbon footprint while at the same time optimizing efficiency and production? This white paper offers action steps you can take to implement sustainability initiatives that help promote production efficiency and reduce energy costs.
With more than 155,000 employees across 70 different countries, Cargill is a major player in the global food and beverage production and supply chain space. Maintaining strict hygiene of their production facilities while ensuring the highest quality products depends on many factors, and Rittal’s solutions help ensure the most optimal environment.
Read the full case study
How to Efficiently Integrate Panel and Enclosure Modifications
With food and beverage production, relying on a complex, global supply chain for panel and industrial enclosure modification is not only expensive, but labor shortages, material shortages, and shipping delays add unnecessary complexity to the modification process. In addition, the high degrees of customization food and beverage producers require with their panels and industrial enclosures for each hygienic zone and unique deployments leaves the door open for prolonged lead times.
Automated modification solutions remove the potential for errors while also allowing for more precise and custom industrial enclosure modification without the need for a large labor force. Faster, more efficient modification services result in reduced turnaround time and cost reduction, which further simplifies your value chain and helps ensure production programs are not tethered to the fluctuations of a large, global supply chain.
Rittal’s network of U.S.-based modification and distribution centers provides coast-to-coast coverage to help ensure your panels and industrial enclosures go from the modification center floor to your door with speed and accuracy. Our modification centers house machines from our Rittal Automation Systems (RAS) line, which deliver customization with superior precision and quality. Our regional distribution centers stock component parts to help ensure you have the right part at the right place at the right time.
How to Rethink Your Power Distribution Systems
As food and beverage manufacturers modernize their industrial automation and enclosure frameworks, the need for a smarter, more efficient method of power distribution system to the industrial panels and enclosures that help drive production processes is more pressing than ever. Legacy power distribution systems come with a variety of liabilities and challenges food and beverage manufacturers must overcome, including complex and time-consuming installations; time and resource-intensive maintenance; less physical space within the enclosure due to cumbersome, outdated designs; and increased downtime due to frequency of maintenance.
With Rittal busbar electrical panels, food and beverage producers will experience:
- Reductions in the use of space relative to the panel and enclosure
- Easy troubleshooting in the event of control interruption or failure
- Time savings during installation, maintenance, or upgrades
- Increased operational efficiency
Manufactured with global compliance and use in mind, Rittal’s electrical busbar systems also provide superior protection against shock and accidental arcing. Our busbar electrical panels also allow for electronically safe installation and maintenance up to 60 IP inside the industrial enclosure to reduce the likelihood of electrical fault and danger to both personnel and production floor equipment.