Miller Magazine Issue: 135 March 2021

51 COVER STORY MILLER / march 2021 The Fourth Industrial Revolution is changing the whole world. Key concepts of doing business in Industry 4.0 are ‘innovation’ and ‘digitalization’. Many companies in every field devote huge budgets to innovative projects and incorporate digital technolo- gies such as blockchain, robotics process automation, and artifi- cial intelligence into their production processes. One of the sectors influenced by innovation and digitalization is the milling industry. Innovation can meet the needs of the rap- idly growing world population with digital investments in a sus- tainable manner. Technology has the potential to bring greater advantage to all players in the supply chain, bringing greater ef- ficiency to production processes. The companies that realize this are making investments in order to adapt to the changing market conditions and to the digital age to meet the demand. Machine manufacturing giants, global food security agencies, enzyme and additive manufacturers, nutritional solution providers, grain bin manufacturers, global data collection firms are investing heavily in innovating process and providing solutions to include in the automation system and creating many web-based intuitive user interface applications to provide an overview of the milling pro- cess, real-time yield calculation, controlled production system, providing comprehensive data analyses on yield, stocks and prices in the global market. Most of the innovations during the last decade aimed mainly to face the challenges of the flour milling industry, like lowering production costs, improving working conditions, complete pro- cess automation through application industry 4.0, and controlling product quality. Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, flour mills had to improve the quality and safety of flour, and equipment suppli- ers who serve the milling industry had to introduce new technol- ogies that make flour production more safe and efficient. Having access to reliable contaminant mitigation, trustworthy information and real-time quality monitoring are chal- lenges for food processors. Automation and digitalization are inspiring exciting new solutions that can address these is- sues, enabling processes to be adjusted to optimize yield, save energy, prevent wastage or contamination and remove defective produce. New technologies in milling