What would you value in a future food facility? That is the question Wiley is asking every foodpro 2014 attendee who visits its stand.
The food facility design and construction company is asking visitors to sift through a deck of cards, each of which has an image of a different human-centred facility design element, such as ‘ergonomics’ or ‘access to the outside’.
From this deck they must then choose the six elements that they prioritise the most highly and arrange these in a pyramid on an A3 survey form in their perceived order of importance, along with a brief note on the reason behind their choice.
“As more and more automation occurs and systems become more complex, humans within a facility will be fewer, more highly trained, and represent a large business investment. How do we attract and retain these highly trained people? How do we optimise the business, the process, the data and the human environment for best practice,” the survey asks.
Wiley is then inputting the data and presenting the live results of the study on a large screen at its foodpro stand. This data can be sliced and diced according to age, industry and role, and it is already revealing some interesting trends, according to Wiley’s marketing manager, Clare Mitchell.
She says the foodpro survey is part of a long-term campaign of research that aims to build an evidence-based approach to facility design.
“This isn’t just token research. These insights will be fed into our design process engineering,” she says.
Steve Christie, process engineering director at Wiley, recently told Food & Drink Business that Australian food manufacturers undertaking plant upgrades must avoid building a “new old facility” if they want to succeed into the future.
Christie will be tackling this issue at the inaugural Food & Drink Business Live: Industry of the Future Forum 2014, which will be held on Monday, 11 August at Sydney's Royal Randwick Racecourse.
