The Changing Role of Conveyors in Food and Beverage Manufacturing Environments

Food safety regulatory standards continue to change with the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) and Safe Food for Canadians Act (SFCA) showing recent changes affecting the way North America food manufacturers operate. The elevator conveyor and the more general foodpackaging conveyor are just two areas where manufacturers are seeing changes in conveyors for food and beverage manufacturing. 

Conveyor manufactures have had to step up in terms of risk identification, monitoring, and mitigation for food safety to prevent adverse outcomes. Production zones, hygienic designs, environmental controls and physical barriers for contaminant prevention are just some areas they must plan for in designing custom conveyors. These and an extensive list of other environmental considerations are dictated by regulatory and manufacturing mandates. They must all be integrated into conveyor planning and design to meet processor and packager production system needs. 

Conveyor System Efficiency, Workflows, and Automation

Gentle and secure product handling by conveyors are part of larger design considerations to prevent jams, spacing issues, or mis-oriented products. Conveyors have a symbiotic relationship to production machines, so they must work seamlessly with overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) and preventative maintenance (PM) efforts. This can impact how manufacturers leverage automation to consistently deliver products to the machinery.

The convergence of industry 4.0, OEE, and automation focuses on high throughput where mixed model assembly lines are driving conveyor innovation according to Assembly Magazine. This is happening in a manufacturing world where automation, manual operations and regulatory food safety requirements must coexist as the food processing industry advances in steps rather than leaps. They collectively change the fundamentals of how conveyors are designed and how analytics is used to make everything work smoothly and safely.

Automation controls for food and beverage manufacturing environments are advancing alongside new technologies in belting, motion control, and electrical control systems. The goal is to ensure that conveyors can be integrated with overall production control and monitoring systems to maximize throughput and safety.

This is especially true for the elevator conveyor, where food product delivery for mixing or packaging requires precise and unwavering timing. When you add in the challenges of existing footprint constraints and hygienic designs, conveyor systems must also be designed for maximum and customized layout flexibility.

Hygienic Conveyor Design in Available Footprints

The unique demands of food production add another layer of complexity to conveyor design, operation, and installation. Food conveyor manufacturers must also take into account the hygienic zoning in conveyor utilization when transporting raw, processed, and packaged food through the production process. The food packaging conveyor must match the appropriate hygienic design features while balancing required functionality, throughput and maintenance/management needs. 

Conveyors can make or break production goals, so they must function holistically within the overall production system to ensure peak performance. Product transitions from one operation to another are customized in food processing manufacturing to match machine to machine and conveyor section to conveyor section transfers. 

While automation is crucial to making this process work, conveyor systems must be designed to integrate with the available space, targeted production throughput, and conveyor section designs based on individual processes. Integrating the elevating conveyor in such a system can introduce its own challenges to seamless automation integration. With many conveyors, automation solutions must: 

• Maximize capacity to free up floor space and make the most of your available area
• Reduce labor and operational expenses
• Reduce order fulfillment cycle times
• Increase order fulfillment accuracy
• Increase overall productivity and profitability
• Consist of modular solutions custom designed for your unique process

With the crucial role that conveyors play in Industry 4.0, food and beverage manufacturers must have the right automated conveyor system manufacturer that’s capable of creating modular solutions matched to unique processes. By defining the right equipment, technologies and, path flow for your distribution process, food conveyor manufacturers can ensure optimized throughput.To learn how Conovey Conveyor Systems can support your food and beverage manufacturing environment conveyor automation needs for industry 4.0, through custom conveyors, call us at 1 (844) 876 8889 (Toll Free).

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sherontymm Joined: November 18th, 2020