The CAT Squared User Summit is designed to add value to food production operations by sharing best practices in the industry for adopting new technology to manufacturing processes.

In the following article, Jesús Membreño (poultry group MES lead at Cargill) shares his knowledge gained during a multi-site implementation of the CAT2 MES (Manufacturing Execution System) for Cargill Central America. The implementation included integration into plant-floor hardware as well as the company’s ERP system (Enterprise Resource Planning) to maximize data management capabilities by harnessing the power of IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things). By using the multi-plant benchmarking process, Cargill creates meaningful, shareable knowledge from many terabytes of data.

One of the hot topics at February's annual meeting of the National Turkey Federation (NTF) was the Turkey Demand Project. In 2015, U.S. consumption of turkey was 16.0 pounds per person. NTF’s goal is to increase per-person turkey consumption to 20 pounds by 2020.

In October 2015, Manufacturing Enterprise Solutions Association (MESA) International released their annual MES Product Survey. This is the 16th year MESA has published this report tracking trends in manufacturing execution systems (MES). This year, the report included feedback from MES suppliers from around the world who submitted data on 71 MES products, their services, technologies, quality, and industry focus. Of the 67 participating vendors, CAT Squared was the only solutions provider whose sole focus was serving the food industry.