Miller Magazine Issue: 135 March 2021

52 MILLER / march 2021 A good manager is one who can man- age a company during a crisis. The global COVID-19 pandemic, in addition to highlight- ing the safety of flour, has increased the de- mand for household flour in many parts of the world. Throughout this crisis, flour mills had to improve the quality and safety of flour, and equipment suppliers who serve the milling in- dustry had to introduce new technologies that make flour production more safe and efficient. Today, companies which do not innovate their products constantly cannot survive in the competition with other companies, cannot proceed in the markets, and their profit will stay at the minimum level. The most essential activities for innovation are investing a signif- icant source and time for research and devel- opment (R&D). However, without turning the long and exhaustive R&D into commercial in- come it may not be called as innovation. Any company that want to be among the leader companies have to has a strong commitment to R&D. 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 process automation through application industry 4.0, and controlling product quality. Throughout COVID-19 crisis, flour mills had to improve the quality and safety of flour, and equipment suppliers who serve the milling industry had to introduce new technologies that make flour production more safe and efficient. Latest flour milling technologies Prof. Farhan Alfin Prof. Dr. Farhan Alfin is working now as a production supervisor at Darıca Flour Mill, Trabzon, Turkey. He obtained his Ph.D. from Ege University in Izmir, Turkey, from the Department of Food Engineering in 2000. He worked at Avrasya University, Trabzon from 2005 to 2019 and hold the position of Head of the Food Engineering Department. He worked at Albaath University in Homs City, Syria at the food engineering department from 2000 to 2015, and he held the position of head of department from 2006 to 2010. During that period, he offered his consultancy and education services to several flour mills in Syria. On another level, he worked as the executive manager of Alakhras Mill in rural Homs from 2009 to 2015. He is also the author of “Cereal Milling Technology” book in written in Arabic language.