This is an original article from Workforge.

By: Ramsey Atieh

Credit: Workforge

Welcome to the first installment of our four-part series on why you need to stay ever ready for audits in food manufacturing. Throughout this series, we'll explore strategies for food manufacturers to effectively ready themselves for audits by harnessing digital tools, ensuring robust safety standards, compliance, and transforming audits into streamlined processes at the click of a button.

Written by Matthew Inniger of Manager of the  Advanced Technology Program of CIFT, part of  Ohio MEP. This article first appeared on the NIST Manufacturing Innovation Blog. 

This is an exciting time in the food manufacturing industry. The innovations and technology associated with Industry 4.0 are making it easier for small and medium-sized manufacturers to overcome obstacles in ways that at one point would not have been considered. While manufacturers have previously been slower to move toward incorporating advanced industry technologies due to the high level of regulation and biologically complex products with which they work, innovation is becoming more widely accepted as a key to industry sustainability. Two examples of such Industry 4.0 technologies are automation and augmented reality.