Technologies such as IoT, AI, predictive analytics, and QMS are providing essential tools to help combat quality issues and reduce product recalls.
The number of food recalls issued increased by more than 20 percent from 2020 to 2023, and in 2023, the number of product recalls reached a seven-year high, according to Sedgwick Claims Management Services. In late 2024, we heard about the 18-state listeria outbreak associated with tainted deli meat. However, product recalls are impacting not just the food and beverage industry but also many other sectors, such as the automotive industry and consumer packaged goods.
A global study, The ETQ Pulse of Quality in Manufacturing 2024, found that the majority of survey respondents (73%) have had a product recall in the past five years, with financial costs reaching $99.9M in the U.S. alone per incident. Respondents also cited additional negative consequences of product recalls, including damage to brand reputation, delayed product introductions, plant shutdowns, and staff lay-offs.
What’s driving the rise in product recalls? While the data shows that product recalls have in fact risen, they’re becoming more visible because of better ways of detecting issues, automated inspection processes and digital solutions in general. And, when it comes to food product recalls, advances in food safety technology have made it easier to identify and trace pathogens such as listeria, salmonella and allergens. Yet recalls continue to rise for many reasons, including the complexity and long tail of the supply chain.
This complexity makes it difficult to oversee and forge deep supplier relationships—or even to properly understand who exactly is manufacturing your parts or supplies and from where. There’s also the issue of increased regulatory scrutiny and mandatory reporting requirements, which means that manufacturers are more likely to issue recalls as a precautionary measure.
Fortunately, advancements in technology are providing promising solutions to mitigate and even prevent product recalls and the safety challenges, exorbitant costs and risk to brand reputation, they’re causing.
Consider the following best practices manufacturers can leverage to proactively address quality issues and reduce product recalls.
Keep Track with IoT and Real-Time Monitoring
The Internet of Things (IoT) provides a network of physical devices and machinery that are connected to the Internet to receive and exchange data with other devices and systems through sensors, software, and other technologies. This enables real-time monitoring of machinery and systems to ascertain environmental conditions, such as temperature, pressure, and machine performance, and collect vital data that can be analyzed to detect anomalies that might indicate potential defects. It is essential to get a perspective on the data that is critical to the operation. Understanding what data is readily available and where there are gaps is key to driving a plan to collect and operationalize the data.
In addition to real-time monitoring, gathering the data also unlocks other potential solutions that can leverage the data to train artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms.
See also: How 5G Could Improve Food Traceability
Automate Quality with AI and Predictive Analytics
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics are revolutionizing quality control in manufacturing. Traditionally, quality management was conducted on spreadsheets, or manually with inspection checklists on the plant floor, which is not only inefficient but prone to errors. AI-driven systems are now monitoring and analyzing products and processes in real-time using sophisticated image recognition and pattern detection algorithms. These systems learn from vast amounts of data to identify even the smallest deviations from quality standards.
It is critical to identify the problem that you are trying to solve with AI. Once the problem is identified, ensure you have the data needed to train an algorithm to effectively address it. By allowing the solution to analyze historical data and production trends AI can help to trigger or predict alerts about areas of concern so that proactive measures can be taken. For example, if a particular component has a history of defects, the system can flag this component and suggest design or process changes to avoid future recalls.
Leverage Enterprise-Wide Data
Since product issues don’t only take place on the plant floor, enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions, quality management systems (QMS), or other enterprise business systems provide a single source of product truth across the enterprise – from the plant floor to most corporate functions. By capturing all critical data enterprise-wide, these systems can provide visibility, as well as automated processes to ensure proper document management and inspection management and to keep track of employee training programs, as well as other compliance requirements.
In order to get the most out of your enterprise business system, it’s important to ensure that it can help you uncover the ultimate source of product issues in order to resolve them. By integrating an enterprise business system, for example, with a supplier’s system of record, you can have greater oversight of suppliers to monitor quality and automate the supplier inspection process.
Technologies such as IoT, AI, predictive analytics, and QMS are providing essential tools to help combat quality issues. When we bring those technologies together, however, the real magic happens. Applying AI and machine learning to analyze the vast amount of (IoT) data can help uncover deficiencies in systems and processes and predict the likelihood of future issues so that preventative action can be taken. This same data and insights can inform the path for better design of processes, worker training, and supplier visibility – all enabling better product quality going forward.
Technology alone, however, cannot be a panacea. Technology, coupled with a human-centric focus on product quality, needs to remain the main priority and ultimate mission of manufacturers. This is the only way to ensure that the record number of product recalls that we hear of daily don’t become consistently part of the evening news.