More throughput, greater flexibility and fewer workers were cited by JM Smucker Co. recently when it announced plans to close three fruit-spread plants, update equipment and technology at another, and build a new state-of-the-art food manufacturing facility in Orrville, OH.

One of the shuttered factories, also in Orrville, is 60-plus years old, and new technologies and efficiency improvements at its replacement will accommodate higher volumes with 180 fewer workers, a 40-percent reduction.

Tools have taken jobs from people since the discovery of the fulcrum, and the machine age accelerated the shift. Labor replacement has been the core justification for automation investments for decades, but other factors are coming into play. Metrics such as overall equipment efficiency are casting both labor and older mechanical systems in a different light. Information systems that reconcile available inventory and cost of production are advising manufacturers not only if an order can be met, but whether it will be profitable to do so.

But the real automation game changers are food safety and sustainability. Safety concerns drove much of the automation investment in the last decade. Everything from raw-material lots to work in progress to finished goods is bar-coded and scanned at each step to better account for where food came from and where it went. Metal detectors became ubiquitous, and X-ray units are now complementing and sometimes replacing them. Sensor technology already is being deployed to identify volatile organic compounds that signal spoilage in commodity ingredients, and biosensors will become part of the food defense system, once issues of sampling and cost are resolved, notes John Pierson, principal research engineer at Georgia Tech Research Institute. And while most robotics applications are post packaging, removal of human contact with food in process is becoming part of the cost rationalization for upstream uses.

In the decade to come, sustainability will share the stage with food safety as an automation shaper. The expectations of retail and foodservice customers, shareholders and investors for socially responsible business behavior are part of the reason, but hardheaded business drivers also are at play. With production already optimized, the only place to turn for margin protection is better management of energy costs, water usage and other resources.

“Senior management is under increased pressure to lower production costs, develop more sustainable manufacturing, and better ensure product safety,” writes analyst John Blanchard of ARC Advisory Group. Even instrumentation is being swept up in the green wave: Mettler Toledo recently introduced electrodes that eschew mercury, lead and other hazardous materials in favor of platinum, polymers and other benign materials.

“There has been no sacrifice in performance,” says Wallace Harvey, Mettler Toledo market manager. “In many cases, performance has improved.”

Controlling utility costs is as important as managing uptime and changeovers, concurs Sean Hoffman, senior controls engineer with The Dennis Group. Manufacturers are keenly interested in metering compressed air, natural gas, electricity and “every gallon of water that was used to produce a product,” he says.

“It costs money to do that,” Hoffman acknowledges, but food companies are making the investment. One way to reduce metering costs when retrofitting a plant likely will be wireless data-acquisition networks.