5 Applications Of AI In Food Processing Industry
Among various manufacturing industries in the United States of America, Food processing & Handling is the most important one.
According to the report from government officials of the USA agriculture department, the 16% share of total shipments comes from food processing plants, and these departments are employing around 1.5 million.
There is a misconception that advancements in technology, but the truth is it will never happen and that too in the food industry.
Humans will play an essential role in this sector to maintain & repair old equipment, to look after operations, and to come up with new innovative & creative ideas for new food processing opportunities. (Artificial Intelligence In Agriculture & Food Process)
According to the research report of McKinsey, it is expected that the FP&H industry will reach $100 billion by 2021, with 5% of CAGR.
Among all the sectors, it is the industry that has fewer profits and high volume, and it is looking to find new ways to enhance efficiency that help to make segregation between a loss or gain. It is one of the most influential reasons for large firms in choosing AI technology (The Significance Of AI Technology By Industry) to advance an assortment of aspects of the methodology.
The AI can work hand in hand with the human workforce to enhance operational competence with the food processing industry, which automates the complete process by 90% of operations.
In this article, we are going to discuss AI applications in the food industry.
Application of AI in food processing
Let us discuss the AI applications that are very much precise to the food processing & handling industry. Besides it, there are various other applications of AI that indirectly or directly have a greater effect on the food industry.
Let’s begin reading!
- Sorting food products & packages
Proper sorting of food products & packages is one of the greatest challenges for the manufacturing facilities because the feedstock we receive from various farmers is not identical or uniform.
Once you have a look at the different fruits & vegetables like carrot, apple, grapes, tomato, orange, and many more will have their shapes and sizes.
A sorting plant required to segregate millions of meticulous veggies depending on color, shape, and size.
TOMRA, one of the best companies in food sorting, revealed that 90% of the food is sorted out with the help of human resources/labor before the 21st century. Currently, the situation is different; most of the food sorting plants are shifted to automated processes.
With the help of the automation, the food sorting industry has seen many benefits such as:
- Enhancement of speed.
- Yield improvement
- Minimization of labor costs.
The automation systems use various tools and technologies like lasers, cameras, X-rays, and Near Infra-red spectroscopy to hastily analyze each facet of the fruit or vegetable as it comes in. While older systems mainly concentrate on sorting good from spoiled or bad.
TOMRA said that their peeling and sorting solutions could recover 5-10% of produce by enhancing usage to minimize the number of potatoes thrown out due to damage.
And in the same way, a Japanese food company is started using TensorFlow machine learning technology to detect the oddities instantly in their diced potatoes. The company found that the systems are working more accurately than expected, and it became a significant advantage in their production.
As they are successful with the testing on diced potatoes, they are planning to expand AI utilization for other sources or departments of the production or industry.
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- Ensuring personal hygiene
As we care about our kitchen with the utmost cleanliness, AI also making sure to maximize food processing plant hygiene that helps in making sure that the plant is running with rules and regulations and with USA government guidelines.
KanKan partnered with the Shanghai’s Municipal Health Agency to provide object & facial recognition (Computer Vision Applications)for an undisclosed amount. As KanKan is reputed to be very good at delivering smart solutions, it is planning to expand its services to 2,000 facilities from 200 restaurants.
This technology is used to find out an individual who is not following rules and regulations, and they can corrected in real-time with no delay.
- Helping customers in decision making
AI is not only helping food processing companies in making flavor combinations; they also assist customers in selecting new-fangled flavor mixtures.
In 2018, Kellog introduced Bear Naked Custom that is most beneficial for the clients to make their personalized granola from 50+ ingredients.
Apart from helping individual users, it saves information like flavor mixtures, selection of users, re-order flavors, and many more. This stored information or data is helpful for the company to what new products need to bring into the market.
- Enhancing cleaning process equipment
In food processing sectors or industries, maintain proper cleanliness is the most onerous task to handle or deal with.
Most of the food processing says they are very much clean like white paper; its due to most of the process involves the automation process, and no human labor is involved in the processing.
We all know no human labor is involved in it. But, what if the machinery is contaminated or damaged?
With the advancement of technology, every customer became very smart, and they are not even trusting to eat food that comes from the complete automation process. They are looking for more genuinely and proof they consume it.
According to the sources of the University of Nottingham, more than US$ 133 million saved by the UK food processing industry in a year and in which 30% account goes for energy & water.
Martec of Whitwell strongly feels that it can reduce only 50%, which allows more productivity and less downtime.
The method or procedure currently we are following has no sensors by which it can not see what is happening inside the equipment. Due to this reason, companies are designing the procedure in such a way that it should run as long as it required.
Currently, Martec is now testing its self-optimizing clean-in-place system. For the testing process, it uses optical fluorescence & ultrasonic sensing imaging technologies to nourish data to the designed AI program to know how much microbial debris & food left in the equipment or inside the device.
As the technology in the ending stage of the testing phase of 12 months, after that, they will take stand after a complete analysis of the report.
- Developing new products
In this sector, it is very challenging for companies to imagine what customers are exactly looking out for, and companies are taking the help of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence to figure out this problem.
It is the only industry among many that have the capability to offer multiple numbers of products in various spices, ingredients, flavors, and many more. In the food industry, there is a possibility of recipes to tweaked in numerous types.
Now, most of the food processing and packaging industries are taking the help of the AI to develop & introduce into the market.
If you can observe in the complete USA, Coca-Cola installed self-service soft drink fountains to allow customers to personalize their drink. With the help of this machine, the customer has the capability to create thousands of drinks by adding different flavors to their base flavors.
These fountains will collect complete information with the help of AI regarding consumer preferences. Based on the collected data, they came out with a product called Cherry Sprite.
The data suggests that in the next four years, most of the food processing companies able to take the complete advantage of the recommendation engine for creating new flavor combinations and new products in the market.
- Final words
Food industry at primary stage in using AI and day by day its role is becoming very crucial because of its ability to increase hygiene and save food from going waste.
In the coming years, AI is going to revolutionize the FP & H sector forever and it has the potential to develop an affordable and healthier industry for customers and workers.
Now, the time has come for mobile app development service providers; because in the coming up years, many of the food processing companies will look after AI solution providers, which can help them in being the competition and to rule in the food processing industry.
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