Last Thursday, more than 240 Retail Confectioners International (RCI) convention attendees toured Savage Bros. offices and its manufacturing facility in Elk Grove Village, Ill. The next day, 11 employees in the company’s engineering area of the 81,500-sq.-ft. complex were startled to hear a rumbling sound around 1:45 p.m.

And this year, they even have machines talking to themselves. It’s dubbed Industry 4.0. As Wikipedia explains, “Industry 4.0 is the current trend of automation and data exchange in manufacturing technologies. It includes cyber-physical systems, the Internet of things and cloud computing.” 

Public Health England (PHE), an executive agency of the United Kingdom’s Department of Health, last week released guidelines for sweets manufacturers to cut sugar levels by 20 percent over the next three years.