Tackle Sustainable Food Manufacturing Goals with Existing Digital Systems

Two trends are driving a focus on aligning quality, safety, and sustainability in food and beverage manufacturing.

Fortunately, food and beverage manufacturers have a green light opportunity to lead by using existing quality and safety practices to set and achieve transformative environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals! Digital solutions used for transparency, quality, and safety management are primed to help capture data, measure key performance indicators (KPIs), enable enterprise-wide reporting, provide insights with analytics, and optimize production for sustainability.

How can good manufacturing practices (GMPs) and existing food safety and quality management systems contribute to sustainability success?

According to Harvard Business Review, 79% of food companies in the UK struggle to measure and report on environmental performance. Manually tracking and tracing sustainability KPIs present major challenges. The report goes on to say that "digital technologies can significantly streamline this process." Automation systems to power GMPs that manage compliance for quality and safety have been widely adopted. For instance, by implementing Proficy Smart Factory, a major dairy manufacturer was able to connect to quality control systems across its enterprise, integrate for a modern Manufacturing Execution System (MES), and launch a digital transformation journey. Similar systems can also help tackle sustainability regulation.

Regulatory bodies encourage the use of software to reduce compliance timelines and meet safety guidelines.

Digital transformation for compliance is not new, in fact, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently issued new draft guidance for quality management software as well as the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) with a 2026 deadline for compliance. As an extension of their food safety standards, the European Union plans to adopt a legislative framework for sustainable food systems, including labelling requirements. GE Vernova’s Digital solutions are aligned with these global changes by helping to optimize compliance while driving production efficiency and reducing variable industrial costs. Now, we are bridging these capabilities so manufacturers can link their environmental sustainability agendas to concrete plant-floor action logs. These foundations help enable enterprise agility to evolve as global sustainability compliance and labelling transparency requirements materialize and become international standards.

How are food and beverage manufacturers using digital transformation to tackle sustainable development goals (SDGs)?

Food and beverage manufacturers face increasing expectations to disclose climate-related risks, carbon emissions from operations, and demonstrate action toward a low-carbon future.

Leading companies are using software solutions to make progress in various areas:

To prepare for the future of food manufacturing, manufacturers can be inspired by HACCP standards or other codes such as Safe Quality Foods (SQF) and use digital tools to help understand, report on, and improve sustainability KPIs. Current sustainability reporting is characterized by annual, spreadsheet-based, and hand-assembled aggregations of operations data. Digitized, granular data is essential for food manufacturers to operationalize their energy transition and decarbonization strategies - and move from ambition to action.

How are digital sustainability management solutions evolving for the future of food manufacturing?

GE Vernova is continuously innovating the Proficy industrial software suite to ease adoption of sustainability best practices. In collaboration with customer innovation partners, our team is exploring real-time monitoring of utilities consumption, how to understand and explain usage rates relative to targets, and how enterprises can minimize both the costs and environmental impact of the electricity, water, and other inputs consumed to make products. Proficy software concepts may also help enterprises mine previously untapped data for sustainability business intelligence, enabling performance comparisons, best practice standardization, and network optimization.

By utilizing dependable, trusted Proficy software products, businesses can strive towards sustainability goals while capturing and creating business value.

GE Vernova solutions help enable food manufacturers to meet shareholder expectations, enhance brand image, mitigate greenwashing risk, reduce variable industrial costs, and build operational excellence.