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Smart Manufacturing Platform Transforms Poultry Processing

U.S. government-funded CESMII is using ThinkIQ’s intelligence platform to drive smart manufacturing in a pilot project at a chicken rendering plant. The findings could help improve efficiencies across all kinds of energy-intensive industries.

ThinkIQ’s cloud-based platform takes into account contextual data across the supply chain.
ThinkIQ’s cloud-based platform takes into account contextual data across the supply chain.
Image courtesy of ThinkIQ

One of the largest food companies and a leader in protein is embracing highly contextualized data to increase operational efficiencies. Though the pilot project is focused on chicken rendering—with product streams including bone meal, feather meal, chicken meal, and blood meal—the findings will help to improve efficiencies across all kinds of food processing sectors and other energy-intensive industries.

Through data-rich technology from ThinkIQ, along with the CESMII Smart Manufacturing Innovation Platform, the producer aims to transform its poultry processing operations—quantifying variability in the supply chain and the process, along with its impact on yield, for chicken by-products. Optimizing yield and material utilization on the poultry processing line will enable decisions based on real-time constraints in material flows, manufacturing operations, and energy consumption.


Read article   Read more about CESMII and the projects it's funding.

These days, it’s more detrimental than ever for manufacturers to ignore how supply chain issues impact their operations. Doug Lawson, CEO of ThinkIQ, saw that during his years within the automation sector, working for big players like Schneider Electric and Rockwell Automation, where he had the opportunity to speak with some of the biggest manufacturers about where their real challenges were. “The problems of what happens inside the four walls of the factory were no longer their biggest problems,” he says. Instead, problems across the supply chain affected not only business efficiencies but product quality as well.

“You’ve got to be able to look at your supply chain holistically—what’s happening in real time across the whole supply chain,” Lawson says. It’s important to be able to embrace the sensor data from the manufacturing floor, he adds. “Without real context, it’s really hard to use. Without the business content, it’s not very useful.”

ThinkIQ is leveraging the CESMII SM Innovation Platform to avoid implementing another information island on the plant floor, thereby reducing cost and complexity, Lawson says. The proof point for the CESMII project is with one chicken rendering plant. “If the project is successful, the end customer will expand over all 13 of its chicken rendering facilities,” he says.

ThinkIQ’s cloud-based platform takes into account contextual data across the supply chain.ThinkIQ’s cloud-based platform takes into account contextual data across the supply chain.Image courtesy of ThinkIQ

The system is connected to all of the plant’s data sources, including manufacturing, quality, and business systems. “A lot of it is about energy consumption,” Lawson notes. “How do you make it safe meal? You cook it to death. It’s an incredibly energy-hungry process.”

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