EDGE COMPUTING DRIVEN AUTOMATION FOR SMALL AND MEDIUM POULTRY AND MEAT PROCESSORS

CONTEXT: Small and medium sized Poultry and Meat Processors are challenged by the lack of affordable, secure, reliable, and user-friendly technology solutions that allow them to collect, store, maintain, process, and conveniently access operational data from their facilities, in order to meet their business needs. Their business needs range from addressing the requirements of their customers, prevent waste and overhead, as well as meet the requirements of USDA/FSIS and state regulatory bodies. Today, this data is primarily collected manually by small/medium processors, and the data is scattered across logbooks and clipboards. Metrics such as temperature in their facilities and status of their equipment are monitored by personnel physically in the processing facilities. This often delays corrective actions and leads to waste, delays, and significant overhead in time and cost.GOAL: The goal of this project is to apply Cirrus360's network edge computing platform and radio network automation platform Gabriel™ to the above problem via deployment of a low-cost edge network, automation in the cloud, and a consolidated graphical interface or dashboard. Once the system is deployed via automation, meat processors will be able tocustomize views of their processes as well as receive early notifications of potential quality or compliance issues, freeing up more time for these small businesses to focus on customers, new product development and profitability.OBJECTIVES: The following four objectives will be undertaken in this project to achieve the above goal.[1] Develop an edge network platform customized for the meat processing industry, based on Cirrus360's existing Edge plus Radio Access Network automation platforms. The platform will consist of following components: sensors and cameras, edge computing unit local to the meat processor, and a cloud server. The design will target the following two sub-objectives:The cost structure of the developed platform will fit the business needs of small and medium meat and poultry processing facilitiesDeployment and operation of the network will be formulated as an automation enabled workflow. Installation and operation of the platform will be low touch, requiring no specialized IT knowledge[2] Develop a connectivity solution to support the above edge platform suitable , for small and medium meat and poultry processing facilities, based on WiFi and/or Private 5G.[3] Develop a software infrastructure to provide business specific visualizations to the end user via a Dashboard. This will include:Notifications for deviations from target range of metrics such as temperature,Data collection and logging of the workflow, andDashboard based visualization of the data in a way that it is immediately actionable.[4] Validate the above platform via deployment in our partner's meat processing facilities (Texas A&M and Rail19). Integrate with partner's workflow and train the partner in the use of the Dashboard through which they will primarily interact with the data and notifications generated by the edge platform.