The 13^th annual American Food Sure Summit got off to a brilliant start on Tuesday (25^th March 2025). Following on from a keynote on how to maintain food quality during flights, Adeniyi Odugbemi shared his insight on potential solutions to human error: lessons learned from automation in food safety.

We’ve compiled some of the key takeaways from Adeniyi’s presentation below.

Adeniyi opened with a key question – How can we protect our food safety operations of the future? – to which he supplied a simple, one word answer: automation.

The food industry has been historically very reliant on human intervention – the pitfalls of which include the closure of production lines if employees call off sick. And yet, or perhaps more accurate to say, and therefore, most food safety incidents or recalls are a result of human error – what somebody did or did not do.

According to a study published in the International Journal of Engineering Research and Applications:

• 80% of manufacturing defects have their roots in human error
• 23% of all plant downtime is due to human error

And it is the manually intensive, repetitive and fatigue-inducing nature of these operational roles which put both human safety and food safety at risk, leading to serious economic and customer satisfaction implications for a business.

This, for Adeniyi, is where automation is pivotal to successful food processing and safety of the future. It is not a direct replacement for human intelligence or skill, he caveats, but at the most critical points of the process, where control and consistency are paramount, automation will be the best option.

The benefits of automation include, but are not limited to, increased efficiency, reduced mistakes, increased consistency (a quantifiable metric you could use as a KPI for food safety and quality), reduced food waste and faster, real-time insights.

Sounds good - but how and where should we be looking to automate?

Adeniyi highlighted the first step is to recognise that this investment in our systems will help us deliver the bottom line. When we improve speed and quality, and reduce costs, the initial technological investment will pay off.

Automation can be used to look out how we can automatically track and trace products, to provide real-time insights into potential defects and allergen cross contamination. We can also use machine learning to understand where to optimize energy efficiency and reduce overheads.

And lastly, in a world where the production workforce is shrinking, automation is the key to future-proofing your business against potential staffing challenges.

Want to learn more? Connect with Adeniyi here on The FSQ Network.