How AI Revamps the Food and Beverages Industry

Food and beverage companies must invest in AI innovations to cut costs, grow revenue, and stay current with growing consumer trends.

FREMONT, CA: The food industry isn’t known for its early adoption of advanced technologies. But, spurred by startups, artificial intelligence (AI) has become the most adopted among all technologies. To meet changing consumer tastes, food, and beverage companies are looking to artificial intelligence to help them better their products and stay profitable. Here are some examples of how the food industry is using AI or could be using it in the coming years.

• Sorting Food

One of the most time-consuming tasks in any facility that receives the fresh product is sorting. Sorting products by size and quality can help manufacturers decide which ones should be sent. Sorting produces with defects will help decrease rejection by the retailer or consumer. Therefore, food develops sensor-based optical sorting solutions with machine learning capabilities. The systems leverage various technologies, including cameras and near-infrared sensors, to view food in the same way that consumers do and sort it based on that perception. The outcome is fewer hours spent on manual sorting, higher yields and less waste, and improved quality.

• Managing Supply Chain

With new food safety regulations and the rising demand for transparency, supply chain management is a top priority for all food companies. The ways the food industry is using Artificial Intelligence to improve supply chains include food safety monitoring and testing product at each step of the supply chain, accurate forecasting to managing pricing and inventory, and tracking products from farm to consumers to provide transparency.

• Ensuring Hygiene Procedures

In a food plant, good personal hygiene is necessary to ensure food is safe, and the facility is compliant. Technology companies are on a huge deal to offer AI-powered solutions for improving personal hygiene among food workers. The system, which can be utilized in restaurants and manufacturing facilities, uses cameras to monitor workers and then employs facial-recognition and object-recognition software to decide whether workers are wearing hats and masks as needed by food safety law. If it detects a violation, it extracts the screen grabs for review.

Check out: Top Artificial Intelligence companies