Enhancing Food Processing with Digital Twins

Despite being a fairly young concept, the digital twin has grown to become a valuable solution for businesses. As its name suggests, a digital twin is a “copy”, a digital counterpart of an entity that exists in the physical world, such as aircraft, automobiles, buildings, bridges, plants, factories, and many others. When mapping the real world into a digital clone, digital twin technology uses real-time information to replicate not only the physical object, like a jet engine, but also the inherent processes, thus providing companies with a tool to detect and solve issues, improve business processes, and boost overall performance.  

Food manufacturing, like every industry segment, has its own specific challenges to tackle, and a digital twin appears as an ideal solution to a large number of them. In this article, we’ll look closely at the increasing potential of a digital twin for businesses, its strengths and weaknesses, and its enormous capabilities to enhance food processing facilities.  

The Growing Importance of Digital Twins 

The origins of digital twins can be traced back to 1970 when NASA applied a similar technology—a twin of the command module and its electrical system—on the Apollo 13 mission. Ever since this first application, the technology has evolved, but it wasn’t until the early 2000s that the term “digital twin” was established. Although digital twins have only just started penetrating industries more substantially, their footprint is rapidly expanding.  

The global digital twin market is expected to be worth USD 259.32 billion in 2032, up from USD 12.91 billion in 2023, according to Fortune Business Insights. Multiple studies indicate that North America has the largest digital twin market share globally—worth USD 4.46 billion in 2023 as per Fortune Business Insights—and is forecast to retain the leading position until 2028 as per MarketsandMarkets. The number one industry for digital twins varies across studies, but the top three sectors tend to be aerospace, automotive, and manufacturing.   

Agriculture is also witnessing an increasing penetration of digital twin technology, and you might be wondering — how about the segments related to it? In food processing, the use of digital twin technology is still in its infancy, but it already shows great potential to solve some of the most significant challenges in the field.  

The Case of Food Processing: Benefits of Digital Twins 

Generally speaking, there are two scenarios of using a digital twin to the advantage of a food manufacturing business. On the one hand, if you are running a legacy facility, implementing digital twin technology can help you modernize and optimize your processes. On the other hand, if you’re building a new plant, you can create a digital representation of it before the construction has begun. By introducing a digital twin as a project phase, you gain valuable insights that will guide the creation of the facility and its future operation. You have a tool to approve layout design, enhance the footprint, assess inventory size, and estimate spatial parameters for plant assets. 

In either scenario, there are many benefits of a digital-side counterpart for food processing. Let’s examine the most prominent of them. 

Higher Product Quality 

There’s hardly any aspect of the food manufacturing business more significant than the quality of the food produced. The high and respectively low level of quality is decisive for gaining and losing your customers’ trust. In this respect, food manufacturers that have encountered a quality issue in their production process must be able to identify the reason behind it and take steps to eliminate it. A digital twin provides real-time data about production conditions and points at problems as they are happening, thus enabling teams to fix issues early enough and prevent them from occurring again. This approach can save entire batches from scrapping and ensure better quality products that reach consumers. 

Better Food Safety and Traceability 

Food safety is of paramount importance for the entire food industry, and this puts regulations front and center in the manufacturing process, like CGMPs for Food and Dietary Supplements for the US market or the General Food Law Regulation adopted in the EU. To address the imposed requirements, food processing businesses can employ digital twins as an ultimate control and monitoring solution. A digital twin contains the whole production data of every good in a production line (from source ingredients to final product), which provides the manufacturer with end-to-end traceability insights, such as real-time information about the condition of the food during transportation. In this way, teams can use this data to make sure that the whole process is being executed according to compliance requirements.  

Higher Operational Efficiency 

The digital twin technology unlocks value for food manufacturers in another very important aspect — operational efficiency. Digital twins can effectively forecast bottlenecks on the production line, inventory buffers, and material travel times. As per a McKinsey & Company report, a factory digital twin uncovered blockages in the manufacturing process by accurately simulating real-time production bottlenecks. It was also able to redesign production schedules, thus limiting overtime requirements and cutting monthly costs by 5-7%. The real-time communication between physical systems and a digital counterpart not only identifies blockers but also makes it easier for food processing companies to look for solutions and make the right decisions. 

Meeting Consumer Demands 

In a segment where the satisfaction of every single end customer is a primary business goal, staying flexible is key for food processing companies. The outbreak of COVID-19 saw global eating habits change drastically in a short amount of time. Research points out that restaurant food has dropped in demand as opposed to grocery goods and delivery food. This trend has forced manufacturers to rethink their strategies to adapt to the changing consumer needs, highlighting why businesses must strive for agility. Digital twin technology has much to offer in this context – facilitating change and business growth. As we mentioned above, digital twins carry all the information about a product, which allows manufacturers to make modifications to existing products or develop new ones in the safety of a digital environment. After validating the ideas with a digital twin scenario, businesses can bring these changes into production with expected results.  

Digital Twin of a Customer 

A further opportunity to better meet shifting demands is the establishment of a digital twin of the customer (DToC). It simulates a real-world customer’s or customer group’s behavior and creates a dynamic digital replica of the customer experience. Food manufacturers can benefit significantly from implementing a DToC as it provides them with additional context and predictions of the best customer experience. Drawing on real-time consumer data from CRM systems, shopping cart analysis, market research, and other sources, these digital twins offer businesses a tool to fine-tune the customer journey, predict potential issues and avoid them, build a personalized marketing strategy, and increase revenue by boosting customer satisfaction. 

Drawbacks of Digital Twins 

Digital twins as an emerging technology hold promise to overcome various challenges of the food processing segment (and other industries likewise), but, at the same time, we must bear in mind that the road ahead has some hurdles. 

Developing and deploying digital twins is a long, complex, and costly process. It requires large investments in software and hardware, as well as expertise. Often, companies are inspired by the huge potential of the technology and are tempted to implement a digital twin of an end-to-end process, while the more reasonable approach would be to start with a small-scale pilot project.  

Additionally, digital twin technology suffers from data-related issues. To work properly, digital twins require high-quality data, and their operations deteriorate due to a lack of data or poor quality. Besides, when data is processed too slowly, your reaction to certain delayed alerts might come too late, leading to various negative results. 

Despite being a powerful tool for gaining knowledge and visibility into the production process, digital twins remain a tool — assisting teams to examine, test, and optimize their processes in a digital environment. However, the final decision-making stays with the human. 

Final Thoughts 

Encouraged by the successful implementation of digital twins in other contexts, food processing companies have started seizing the opportunities presented by the technology. There’s certainly a long way for digital twins to go and a number of serious obstacles to overcome, but their potential is immense, and businesses have already recognized it.