Automatic control of industrial food processes

The food industry is a product processing and shaping industry. It is essential to control each stage of this transformation, in order to be certain of delivering the expected transformation at the best possible cost, while ensuring consistency of production. The industrialization of the food industry is relatively recent, and the improvement of industrial practices has gone through a number of stages, as in many other process industries. All these stages have led to the implementation, to varying degrees, of information processing technologies and sciences, including automation. Sometimes innovative, sometimes lagging behind, the various sectors of the food industry are keeping pace with advances in science and technology, within a framework that is difficult due to the particular characteristics of these industries. Nevertheless, they are first and foremost process industries and, as such, are subject to the same concepts and particularities as other sectors such as pharmaceuticals, cosmetics and fine chemicals.

In reality, the food industry covers a vast spectrum of different sectors, both in terms of the type of products handled and the type of processing generated. In order to guarantee these qualities, a certain number of properties must be identifiable by the consumer. However, these properties of use, which are essential because they are immediately perceived by the consumer, are accompanied by other properties that are hidden from the end user. Nutritional, health and technological properties must all be guaranteed. It is undoubtedly this diversity of properties of foodstuffs, whether processed or finished, that characterizes the specific aspects of the food industry. The means of obtaining these properties is the process (all the technological means and their rules of conduct which enable properties to be conferred, or inhibited, on a food product). There are several stages in the life of a process. The design phase is fully covered by process engineering and related sciences. But once designed, the process must be operated. In fact, operation is the most important stage in the life of a process. Continuous improvement and control of operating conditions are key to the profitability of any manufacturing system. In industries where margins are low, and raw materials are highly variable, it is necessary, even essential, to add more or less sophisticated control functions to processes. This is a matter for automation or, in a broader sense, for studies into the operation, control and command of food processes.

The need for safety on the one hand, and rationalization of processing chains on the other, have introduced the need for quality assurance. Lastly, legislation is evolving rapidly, necessitating adaptations which in turn require greater control over...