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EVAREST at Anuga 2021: How Artificial Intelligence makes food production smart

| Press release | Data Management & Analysis | Smart Service Engineering | Saarbrücken

Transparency in food production data: smart data enables manufacturers to produce their food better, cheaper, more climate-friendly and in the right quantities. At this year's Anuga, the world's leading trade fair for the food and beverage industry in Cologne, the team from the "EVAREST" research project, which is funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy, will show how additional revenue can be generated with this valuable data. The researchers are turning data into a secure, stand-alone commodity without giving away know-how or trade secrets.

In the production of food, countless amounts of data are generated that have so far remained unused and thus represent a kind of dead capital. The EVAREST consortium team brings this data into context on its data platform: it is linked, analyzed and evaluated and thus serves as the basis for concrete recommendations for action for upcoming decisions. Furthermore, companies can, for example, compare the efficiency of their production in the form of benchmarking with similar companies without having to reveal their identity. 

In this way, columns of figures that are not very meaningful on their own become highly informative in the big picture. This is not a matter of revealing rightly guarded company secrets or know-how. Rather, it is about anonymized data such as sensor data, statistics, or volume data that are generated incidentally during operation. Electronic contracts and the dispatch of services for local analysis enable secure handling of the data. Participating companies can decide at any time how their data is used. 

At Anuga, a demonstrator will show how incidental data in food production can be used across manufacturers. An exemplary data ecosystem illustrates which data, service and money flows between the players in food production. Based on data from compressed air production, benchmarking is generated that makes energy efficiency in compressed air production transparent. The data for this is collected from the monitoring of compressors in food production. In the application example, companies A and B collect data on their compressors. Through the EVAREST data marketplace, they can purchase a service that analyzes their data locally. As a result, the companies receive information about the energy efficiency of their compressed air system. The next step is then to benchmark with other companies in the same industry. 

The EVAREST team is looking forward to your visit at the DFKI booth in hall BOCF, booth B011A at the Anuga trade fair from 09 - 13.10.2021 in Cologne. Curious people can already visit the landing page in advance to learn more about the project: https://www.evarest.de/anuga 

The research consortium of the project "Evarest".
The German Federal Ministry of Economics and Technology is funding the Evarest project with 2.3 million euros through the "Smart Data Economy" technology program. As part of the project, the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence, DFKI, and Saarland University are working together with Software AG, the Research Institute for Rationalization (FIR) at RWTH Aachen University, Agrarmarkt Informations-Gesellschaft AMI, and chocolate manufacturer Lindt & Sprüngli AG, as well as associated partners Deutsches Institut für Lebensmitteltechnik (DIL) and Bundesvereinigung der Deutschen Ernährungsindustrie e.V. (BVE).