All too often, managers find themselves wishing they could be in two places at once. While cloning isn’t possible, recent advances in remote technology can provide the next best alternative.

That’s what Karl Thorson, global food safety and sanitation manager at Minneapolis-based General Mills, discovered when combining video and sound-enabled headsets with Microsoft’s Teams and other tools. Using these technologies, Thorson and other experts can observe a problem and resolve it at one of the company’s food manufacturing facilities across the globe.

 “We had trouble with cleaning a piece of equipment in one of our plants, so one of the quality technicians put a headset on, and he walked out into the plant and showed me, representing sanitation, one of our suppliers and other subject matter experts,” he recalled. “Nobody had to travel, and we could coordinate everyone’s schedules easily so we could review what’s going on and interact on solving the situation.”

If one positive development emerged from the pandemic shutdown, that would be remote technology, which has taken quantum leaps in recent years.

Thorson said the use of headsets has been a multiyear project with the genesis of the plan starting during COVID as General Mills tried to minimize the impact of sending employees out to audit and inspect plants. Working with an outside firm, the company explored different tools from tablets, eyewear and 360-degree cameras, but eventually settled on the headsets.

 “Basically, we were trying to do FaceTime on steroids and get a good connection,” he explained. “The problem with a lot of these tools is you have to use one or two hands, and that becomes a safety and efficiency concern. This headset gives us a hands-free, voice-activated option.”

In addition to improvements in video quality and user-friendly capabilities, baking and snack companies — and their IT departments — began accepting remote technology to drive efficiencies, enhance training, conduct audits and even allow third-parties access for troubleshooting, although often with cybersecurity restrictions and limitations.

“There are so many opportunities to better connect with our plants and our products using this technology on a regular basis,” Thorson pointed out. “I still can’t smell or touch the product, but I have somebody there who can relay those experiences to us with the high-quality video and sound.”

Overall, remote technology is much broader than headsets. It also includes everything from smart glasses to Zoom to secure virtual private networks (VPNs) where equipment and other third-party vendors can plug themselves into an oven’s or mixer’s control system to diagnose a problem or fine-tune an operation.

“The term ‘telepresence’ has come into people’s minds more recently as they’ve become more aware of remote technology,” noted Dave Watson, food, bakery and snack engineering subject matter expert at The Austin Co. “There’s no question that the post-COVID world has changed our lives dramatically. What happened during COVID, especially the inability to get OEMs into plants and get technicians into plants really accelerated these technologies so people can work remotely and still be effective in what they do.”

Thorson pointed out the headsets can be worn on a bump cap or hard hat and come with a microphone, speakers, noise-canceling earbuds and voice-activated prompts to call up Teams and other apps, much like someone would do on a smartphone. The headsets also had to be run by the company’s IT and safety team before the technology would be approved by General Mills. Because the small monitor is below eye level, it doesn’t obstruct people’s vision and makes the set okay to wear in a production environment.

The primary drivers behind remote technology include reducing travel expenses and decreasing troubleshooting time for bakery staff and equipment companies, said Justus Larson, vice president of operations, Franz Family Bakery, Portland, Ore.

“By using these tools, [equipment companies] can avoid the need to send personnel to different locations for service, support or training,” he explained. “Instead, we can quickly get the best people available to work on the problem, regardless of their location.” 

Larson added that telepresence devices allow for remote customer quality assurance and food safety certification audits as well as for creating training videos for both new and existing equipment.

The bakery also uses such technology for Factory Acceptance Tests (FATs) where they send a telepresence device to an equipment manufacturer instead of a team of people.

“This saved us travel costs and time and allowed us to involve more team members in the FAT, as well as to record the process for later analysis,” he noted.

Justifying the return on investment (ROI) and the resources to roll out this technology are other factors to consider. Often, it’s the IT department that needs to justify ROI and manage remote systems much like laptops, wireless networks and other technology. Thorson believes the ROI is there.

“In one trip, I paid for half of it. I’m trying to explain to people the benefits of it and justify the cost by showing ROI with this technology,” he observed.

For bakeries, using remote technology is about improving communication and driving efficiency by connecting people together.

This article is an excerpt from the September 2024 issue of Baking & Snack. To read the entire feature on Remote Technology, click here.