By Ronak Macwan, Senior Industry Marketing Manager – Manufacturing at Brightly Software, a Siemens company

Like many sectors, the food manufacturing industry has learned to expect the unexpected. Despite the industry experiencing its first year of net growth in three years last year, the dynamic state of world affairs creates new sets of challenges and opportunities. From taxes to tariffs, labor shortages to supply struggles, efficiency is always the name of the game. According to Deloitte’s 2025 industry outlook, the coming year will challenge manufacturers to drive growth through alternative processes beyond traditional pricing.

This especially applies to how food manufacturers view their assets. Manufacturers must have a handle on many different physical assets, from each asset’s lifecycle to the repairment schedule. While pen and paper processes have worked in the past, these teams are missing out on many different financial benefits technologies provide. These tools can help food manufacturers prioritize their assets, resulting in more efficient operations and providing insights that can guide better, more proactive financial decisions. Here are a few important tools in a food manufacturer’s arsenal to make the most of their assets.

Maintenance management

A computerized maintenance management system (CMMS) is a solution that helps food manufacturers streamline their operations. Especially in large facilities with multiple pieces of equipment, the old pen-and-paper process isn’t enough to keep up with the demands of the facility, which can often result in the company wasting time and money on asset maintenance, reports, work orders, and more. A CMMS improves efficiency for food manufacturers by improving equipment uptime and productivity, alerting the team to preventive maintenance needs, and creating a trail of all scheduled work orders.

When food manufacturers can prioritize asset needs based on a preventive maintenance schedule, it not only improves work order and inventory management, but it also results in reduced asset downtime, contributing to financial savings for the company. When assets are running as intended, and employees are spending less time fixing issues, they’re able to produce more products, resulting in improved financial performance in saved maintenance funds and increased sales.

Proactive budgeting

Alongside CMMS, asset investment planning (AIP) is another tool food manufacturers must leverage to experience better financial performance. AIP can help with tasks like planning for capital expenses and developing proactive maintenance budgets by gathering data from the company’s CMMS, facilities condition assessments, and other sources. With all this information at their fingertips, food manufacturers can move away from reactive budgeting and focus on developing proactive, strategic budgets and capital investment plans rooted in data. This also helps the company’s financial team avoid unexpected budgetary surprises, since the facilities management team has clear insight into the needs of each asset and the associated maintenance costs.

Asset prioritization

Not only can creating a proactive budget ensure that leaders across departments are aligned on the needs of the food manufacturing facilities, but it can also contribute to improved overall financial performance. When manufacturing leaders have insight into the lifecycle and maintenance needs of each asset, they can proactively plan for future costs by outlining which assets need to be repaired, which need to be replaced, and more importantly, when that needs to happen and how much that will cost. With a clear understanding of each asset’s needs, the organization can avoid unexpected financial strain that eats into the budget. With everything already budgeted for in advance, thanks to data gathered on each asset, food manufacturers can help the financial department accurately account for the facility’s needs without going over or under budget.

Thanks to technology that tracked the maintenance and work orders on each asset and equipment, one company realized it was replacing the same part on a particular piece of equipment every 12 weeks, leading to lost money in equipment downtime and continual parts repair. Using this data, the manufacturing team determined it was more cost-effective to buy a new piece of equipment altogether than it was to continually replace that specific part. While this seemed like a bigger cost up-front on paper, the data showed that replacing the equipment was a better financial decision in the long run, saving the company thousands of dollars in repair costs and equipment downtime.

2025 will be a critical year for the food manufacturing industry, where time-honored profitability measures will not be enough to remain competitive. Technologies that enable smarter, more strategic use of organizational resources can aid food manufacturers in meeting these challenges head-on. These best practices allow companies to make the most of their assets and prioritize their existing investments to make the most of their operations. It’s time to make efficiency a technological and organizational priority in 2025 — our businesses, and the industry, depend on it.

Ronak Macwan is the Senior Industry Marketing Manager – Manufacturing at Brightly Software, a Siemens company. With over a decade of hands-on experience as a maintenance and engineering expert, working in the food & beverage industry and electrical/utilities sectors, Ronak has expertise in GMP, HACCP, and BRC programs. His background includes extensive knowledge of lean manufacturing and total quality management environments, a proven track record in maintenance management capacity in fast-paced environments, and a deep understanding of building automation, PLC systems, and equipment integration projects.