Key takeaways:
- Productiveness is the highest precedence, with 78% of CPG firms rating it first as they face labor shortages, rising prices, and decreased gross sales regardless of greater manufacturing volumes.
- Sensible manufacturing applied sciences are delivering measurable outcomes, with 37% of producers already utilizing real-time analytics and 70% reporting productiveness as automation’s major profit.
- Meals-specific automation boundaries are being overcome as producers work to create built-in know-how ecosystems quite than implementing remoted options.
As producers face labor shortages, rising prices, provide chain disruptions, and growing shopper calls for for high quality and transparency, productiveness has emerged because the defining precedence for 2025 and past. Greater than three-quarters (78%) of CPG firms and business suppliers now rank productiveness as their prime precedence, adopted by price discount and automation initiatives at 47% every.
Regardless of anticipating a mean gross throughput improve of 23% in 2024 (up from 18% the prior yr), many meals and beverage producers reported decreased gross sales in 2023, and practically 70% noticed a 12% common improve in whole price per product amid inflation. To enhance income, compensate for lower-than-expected gross sales, and navigate price will increase, producers are investing in enhancing their manufacturing processes by way of automation and know-how adoption. A latest survey discovered that 37% of meals and beverage producers have already built-in know-how and real-time analytics of their crops, with 70% of respondents citing productiveness as the first good thing about automation.
Investing in digital maturity
Probably the most important boundaries to automation adoption has been the problem of demonstrating clear return on funding. Nonetheless, forward-thinking producers are justifying their preliminary automation investments by contemplating each rapid productiveness features and their broader, long-term digital maturity. Early automation investments create the inspiration for more and more subtle functions of AI, predictive analytics, and course of optimization.
A few of these investments embody digital twin know-how, permitting producers to mannequin and optimize operations with out disrupting manufacturing, and sensible manufacturing options that combine AI and IoT sensors to create hyper-intelligent processes able to optimizing every little thing from moisture ranges to power consumption.
And though meals producers have been slower to undertake collaborative robotic (cobot) options in comparison with different industries — as a result of distinctive challenges together with sanitation necessities, meals security requirements, and legacy amenities designed for human staff — cobots at the moment are being engineered particularly for meals processing environments. With enhanced washability and security options, cobots can work alongside and underneath the steering of human staff, dealing with probably the most repetitive, standardized duties.
Productiveness isn’t nearly doing extra with much less. It’s about constructing the inspiration for sustainable progress, enhanced high quality, and operational resilience. Essentially the most profitable meals producers aren’t simply adopting particular person applied sciences — they’re creating built-in ecosystems that amplify productiveness features throughout a number of dimensions.
