AI has successfully transformed landscapes across industries. It's only natural that AI has found applications in the food industry and will play a significant role in the global food trend in 2022. One of the critical challenges while making innovations in the food industry is standardization. Using AI to ensure a standard quality of ingredients will be integral to the 2021 food trends as well as for 2022.
There are endless opportunities for leveraging AI in the food industry. AI is already being used effectively in food innovations, which will continue to be a part of the global trend. The following are some AI applications that will play a dominant role:
Safety & Quality
Ensuring good quality in food production requires carrying out tedious safety measures. AI systems easily monitor the quality levels in the production process with more incredible speed and consistency vis-a-vis human workers. AI can further assist in detecting safety issues, breaches, or potential risks, such as a worker not wearing the recommended safety gear.
Reduction in Wastage
AI enables more accurate measurements and strict monitoring, which significantly reduces avoidable wastage. Real-time tracking is made possible through AI, which can spot anomalies in production as they occur.
Hygiene
Cleanliness and hygiene are paramount in food production. The tasks related to hygiene and cleanliness can be optimized using AI technologies. Martech of Whitwell, in partnership with the University of Nottingham, is developing self-optimizing Clean In Place (CIP) systems. A multisensor system powered by AI will detect food residue and microbial debris on equipment and determine the optimal cleaning time. This system can save the UK food manufacturing sector up to £100 million per year.
Environmental Sustainability
Using power and water more efficiently lowers operating costs and margins and reduces the environmental impact of food production. The AI-backed solution quickly identifies variances in fresh products such as fruits and vegetables. It can also easily remove contaminants in these batches by automatically adjusting the water level, and power required. Even facilities management can be made more environmentally sustainable through the use of Energy Forecasting and intelligent alerts. Intelligent Alerts also uses predictive machine learning algorithms to identify issues before they snowball into problems, resulting in costly downtimes.
Optimizing Production
AI can improve the food production process by allowing faster production changeovers and decreasing the time required to switch between products. It can help to train models that will automatically calibrate production processes. This optimization will improve output, quality, and speed and detect production bottlenecks before they become a problem.
Packaging
Consumers are increasingly using e-commerce, leading to a proportionate increase in the need for efficient packing methods. The use of intelligent automation systems takes care of this complex and often labor-intensive task quickly. The use of 3D cameras along with reinforcement learning allows robots to learn new tasks automatically. This automation has resulted in creating incredible accuracy that is easily scalable to meet a rise in demand.
There are tremendous opportunities to be gained by the food and beverage industry by harnessing the power of AI. Implementing and gaining from AI in food industry in 2022 will require thinking from a strategic mindset.
