Schneider Electric EcoStruxure is empowering the food & beverage industry to overcome rising costs, achieve next-generation efficiency and create a resilient supply chain
Food and beverage (F&B) business owners have been navigating a complex landscape of challenges recently, with inflation impacting the price of raw materials and transport costs increasing. Such headwinds, alongside persistently high energy costs and the ongoing skills gap, have implications throughout the F&B supply chain and is ultimately being felt by consumers at the check-out in the form of higher prices.
Digitalised opportunity
The most effective countermeasures concern the unlocking of productivity and efficiency that is associated with digitalisation. Schneider Electric’s mission is to support customers to fully leverage digitalisation to enable flexible and efficient manufacturing that seamlessly harnesses existing or cost-effectively gathered production data and wider supply chain. In fact, the platform provides a shared digital environment that delivers next-generation automation for manufacturers, regardless of legacy assets still in operation, or future technologies yet to be embedded. Further, this Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) enabled suite of capabilities streamlines the increasingly strict compliance challenges of the sector and is an indispensable catalyst for digital transformation, helping to drive sustainability improvements through advanced energy management. Data silos that have previously checked the progress of the F&B sector’s overall productivity through vendor-locked automation systems are entirely removed, leading to sustainability quick-wins that are repeatable across entire enterprises.
Looking both upstream and downstream in the manufacturer’s supply chain, the enhanced visibility of EcoStruxure serves as the linchpin of digitalisation across a range of applications, creating resilience and offering efficiency that delivers value at each stage.
- Farmers and agri-businesses can instantly improve profitability and resource management through shared visibility of raw material supply and delivery with the manufacturer
- Manufacturers themselves can share visibility of their production requirements to raw materials suppliers and logistics for insight across the entire supply network, aiding in operational and strategic decision making, including minimising stock for improved profitability and reduced wastage
- Warehouse and logistics can ensure process, control, and optimisation of operations from receipt to shipping of products
- Retailers can ensure the right information related to the product is available for full traceability and stock management
Optimised sustainability
The growing cost of production that has held back both manufacturers and the wider supply chain from investing in new technologies has been, in itself, a barrier to digitalisation progress. Deploying EcoStruxure creates a clear pathway to improved efficiency, across energy and production. With an IIoT system architecture that connects everything in the enterprise, operators and owners have improved visibility and control. Real-time data analytics and monitoring tools help identify simple changes to energy-intensive processes that deliver rapid ROI and proactive maintenance opportunities that help to reduce downtime. For many users of EcoStruxure, the rapid payback helps bankroll the next steps in digitalisation.
