Digital technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT) and artificial intelligence could improve data management and collection in the poultry industry.
“The poultry and swine industries are very challenging,” said Nikolay Shchetikhin, Project Manager, M-Tech Systems USA, LLC. “These industries are developing very rapidly and there are always new challenges, opportunities, goals and improvements happening from quality assurance to welfare to environment to customer relationship equipment and different kinds of technologies.”
Shchetikhin, alongside Sales Director Jim Johnston, highlighted data management best practices during a TechTalk at the 2021 International Production & Processing Expo (IPPE) Marketplace.
What do data management systems do?
Data management systems gather all the data used in a business into one centralized database. Once this is achieved, different functions – and even other software systems – can be integrated. For example, the accounting system or other areas where data is available throughout the business.
This data can be used to generate reports that can be used throughout poultry businesses to improve operational efficiencies, as well as speed up data entry, data collection and can save employee time.
“The important thing is that we’ve got integrity in that data so we’ve got traceability and we can create visibility on it. It’s a foundation of any well-performing business,” Johnston explained.
IoT streamlines data collection
The Internet of Things (IoT) automatically collects data from sensors and other internet-enabled equipment located throughout the poultry barn or chicken house.
“It’s all interfaced and automatically grabbed so that increases the amount of data we’re capturing for the sheds and the houses,” Johnston said. “Again, we’ve got this integrated data system so we can cope with all this additional data coming into the central point. It’s really a big data set we’re going to create here and IoT helps us to utilize that data in the future.”
How artificial intelligence can help
Artificial intelligence analyzes the data collected, which can improve planning accuracy and troubleshoot possible problems while they are still small.
“We use it also in terms of machine learning aspects to manage tough things like logistics where you’ve got to coordinate live birds on a farm to a factory by a specific time. You’ve got to coordinate a truck, a driver, a catching team and it’s a great way to help solve some of these complex problems,” said Johnston.
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