One of the most important parts of my job is communicating
with industrial technologists from a wide variety of companies. I recently had
an interesting conversation with people from a large dairy plant. Forget any
images you may have; Today's large commercial dairy enterprises are extremely
advanced companies that are always looking for new ways to use technology to
improve the efficiency and profitability of their production. So when I started
talking to the milkmen about how the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is
dramatically increasing the usability of enterprise-generated data, they fully
understood.
While many companies today focus on using data to drive
predictive analytics for maintenance, the dairy industry was looking for an
even higher level of value. They viewed data and the Internet of Things as keys
to completely reimagining their supply chain.
Consumers value the cloud and IIoT because they can access
everything from any device, anywhere. But for the company, the real value lies
in being visible throughout the supply chain - in the case of dairy products,
from farm to refrigerator. Instead of storing data in disparate vaults that no
one can see, IIoT and the cloud connect all these points, creating a new level
of visibility for every player in the chain.
Commercial dairy products and the Internet of Things
Why is this important for commercial dairy products? This
allow them to be more flexible and therefore more profitable. One day the curd
leaves the shelves, so the dairy can quickly release more milk for the curd
factory. But perhaps the mood will change next week, and consumers will stock
up on ice cream instead of cottage cheese. With access to real-time
information, a dairy farm can quickly move milk and sell it to an ice cream
factory in the future. And if a quality issue arises at any point in the supply
chain, the dairy can respond quickly to limit any potential recalls, a critical
priority to protect public safety as well as the dairy's valuable brand.
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