In today's snack and bakery industry, clear-cut traceability is vital to success and longevity, especially when there is a recall and ingredients need to be tracked.

Natural Products Expo West will take place March 5 to 9 at the Anaheim Convention Center. The event is produced by the New Hope Network and is considered is a top trade show in the natural, organic and healthy products industry.

Sound sanitary facility design is vital in the snack and baking industry in order to maintain peak food safety, especially for facilities making products with tricky ingredients or processes from a sanitation perspective. Associated sanitation procedures can also prove a challenge in older facilities.

Ingredient-handling equipment used by snack producers and bakeries ranges from automated batching and dosing machines to pneumatic conveyors, as well as equipment like sifters to prepare ingredients for addition to batches of dough.

Snack food and bakery companies looking to purchase belts and conveyors are asking for larger capacity, quieter machinery, improved safety, greater energy efficiency the ability to reduce manpower, and, thus, costs.

ERP (enterprise resource planning) software can help snack and bakery businesses see the "big picture" while constantly improving. While many ERP software choices are available, they're constantly being improved and changing, too.

In snack and bakery production, the internet of things (IoT) is essential, it can streamline production via connected sensors or RFID, and then feed data back for analysis.

I'll sell you on lean and efficiencies, if you'll buy into change and experimentation.