RS Offers a Comprehensive Range of Food and Beverage Solutions and Services Designed to Tackle Market Challenges
July 18, 2023
RS provides a comprehensive suite of products and professional services designed to help food and beverage industry customers overcome current market challenges, ranging from implementing data acquisition systems to improving production efficiency, equipment uptime, safety, sustainability, and compliance and reducing costs.
The food and beverage industry is the third largest contributor to overall U.S. manufacturing GDP. The U.S. packaged food market alone is estimated at over $1 trillion and expected to grow at a CAGR of almost 5% between 2022 and 2030, and it’s just one of many markets involved in the processing, manufacturing, packaging, storing, and distribution of food and beverage products, as well as the building and maintaining of machinery required to execute those tasks.
RS offers end-to-end solutions for each of these customer segments, partners with customers to solve challenges ranging from retrofitting legacy equipment to implementing IIoT systems and future-proofing maintenance strategies, supports customers through the concept, design, build, and maintenance phases, and provides technical support, procurement, and inventory solutions services. RS can also help customers develop a robust food safety culture that aligns with operational safety and preventive maintenance, lean manufacturing, and employee wellness goals.
Essential product categories include automation and control, preventative maintenance, and material handling and packaging, and solutions extend across every step of the production lifecycle and every food zone defined by the new Food Safety Modernization Act. Each of these essential product categories is well represented in the RS food and beverage product portfolio and offers a broad and deep range of solutions from many of the most trusted suppliers in the industrial manufacturing, automation, control, and maintenance, repair, and operations industries.
Factory automation and control solutions support the movement of food and beverage products throughout the production process, while process automation and control solutions automate and control production processes. Both help support lean manufacturing, operational safety, and preventative maintenance goals and are engineered for high-reliability performance in hazardous environments. Bosch Rexroth Linear Motion Technology is a globally recognized technology and market leader in this product category, offering a wide range of high-performance products for drive, motion, and control applications. Solutions include runner blocks, guide rails, bushings, and mobile hydraulics that help move manufacturing machinery and automate processes.
RS also offers Anybus protocol converters manufactured by HMS Industrial Networks, which specializes in getting industrial devices connected to surrounding systems and the internet to increase productivity and sustainability. These products seamlessly convert one communication protocol to another to enable interoperability between devices and systems with incompatible protocols and are especially valuable when implementing IIoT networks in facilities with a lot of legacy equipment. Float switches from Madison Company are another example of process automation and control solutions and are used to control devices, including pumps, valves, and alarms based on liquid level measurements.
Preventative maintenance solutions help keep facilities up and running safely and efficiently and reduce unexpected equipment downtime and operating costs. Day-Brite CFI by Signify is a leading supplier in this product category, offering affordable and energy-efficient high-bay LED lighting used to illuminate spaces with high ceilings ranging from approximately 20 to 45 feet in height.
Material handling and packaging solutions support crucial tasks extending from forecasting, resource allocation, and production planning to flow and process management, inventory management and control, customer delivery, and even after-sales support and services, and RS offers hundreds of thousands of solutions in this product category.
