How is AI Reforming the Food Industry?
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Artificial Intelligence and machine learning have brought a revolution to every Industry.
The Food Industry is massive. It is around $8.7 trillion, about 10% of the world’s GDP.
The food industry faces a lot of challenges.
Artificial Intelligence and Machine learning has transformed the food industry through its smart aids. It has helped overcome major challenges.
Some challenges for humans are pieces of cake for AI.
The research advances each day and there are going to be some mind-boggling transformations in the upcoming years.
Let’s talk about how AI is coming to the rescue.
Sorting of Food or Products
Sorting of products is a challenge for manual labor and has chances of errors. It takes time and energy to sort the vegetables as per size, weight, dry, wet and even based on how ripe they are.
Artificial Intelligence and machine learning solve this problem in a sassy manner. AI-based cameras detect the food product and classify it accordingly. Moreover, X-rays, infrared and LASERS are used to detect the food product to further details.
Packaging of Products
When the products are ready to be packed into containers, the AI checks different parameters like oxygen, moisture and temperature. It is important that the packages products are checked carefully as the flavors could change, else the quality of the product is affected, sometimes the product expires quickly due to such reasons.
Inventory management
Inventory management is a tedious task. We need to estimate the exact proportions of different food available in the stock.
AI makes this easy. AI-enabled camera and weight sensors associated with the same products estimate the inventory and notify before the stock is over and this process is further Automated with an intimation to the procurement team.
Developing New Products
The development of new products is creative work. There is this misconception that creativity is limited to humans only, Machine Learning has smartly figured this as well.
AI is not smart enough right now to figure out new things by itself, but when Artificial Intelligence is combined with machine learning, it learns quite a lot.
AI could try the possibility of combining different foods and flavors. This is exhausting and tiring for humans. AI could try a combination of different variants in different proportions and humans can check the outcome of each and provide feedback, which can further be picked by machine learning to recommend even better.
Maintaining Hygiene
Maintaining the hygiene of a food processing unit is important and critical. It needs constant attention at particular intervals and varies based on different seasons. Cleaning intervals are different based on the quality of food supplies, raw materials and climate as well. This could be taken care of by the AI which detects the need for cleaning of equipment, and even clean the systems.
AI can also maintain compliance related to the food industry regarding the workforce at the processing units. AI-based cameras can detect if the employee is wrongly dressed or not following any other rules regarding safety, quality, or hygiene.
In a nutshell
Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning are helping us out in solving problems that otherwise take a lot more time, effort and finances.
These are a few advantages of AI, there is progress being made in the research and development of new applications every single day.
