Automation in the Cannabis Industry

Corso System’s roots are in Nevada. And while Nevada wasn’t the first state to adopt cannabis legalization, Corso Systems was working in Reno at a REALLY HUGE BUILDING the day it became legal. The news was dominated by the stories of how the State’s Tax Assessor declared a state of emergency to expedite processing of retail location applications to get more of that sweet tax revenue. Fast forward a few years to now, where cannabis is legal in 34 states and Washington DC, with frequent discussions about legalization at the Federal level happening in Congress as we speak.

With the advent of federal legalization and some projections saying cannabis will be a $100 billion dollar industry by 2026, it’s time to start taking it seriously—in terms of its impact on day to day life, and how technology can be used to speed up production.

For Corso Systems, this means we have started thinking about how we can play a role in this next industry revolution, and we have some ideas.

Food and Beverage

Many cannabis products on the market are no different than any other food and beverage products from an automation perspective. Producing various seltzers, gummies, chocolate bars, breath mints, and many baked goods, walking into a cannabis facility is similar to many other food production facilities. In cannabis facilities, you will often see many of the same machines as in a chocolate factory, or even a brewery with a canning line. The only differences are the recipes and raw ingredients for the products.

As with many food and beverage companies, there is a huge need to integrate these machines into production lines, collect data, track efficiency, setpoints and recipes, and the overall health of the equipment into a centralized system.

Luckily this can all be accomplished using tools like Inductive Automation’s Ignition platform, Canary Labs Process Historian, and other tools to support the architecture—many of which we already have developed. This speeds up deployments and decreasing the time to a full ROI.

Regulation

Unsurprisingly, the cannabis industry is heavily regulated. This makes total sense—many industries are—especially food and beverage which has a lot of overlap with cannabis.

The main difference for cannabis is that the level of track and traceability required by regulation is much higher than most industries. This is where each state dictates a “seed to sale” system where the manufacturing process is tracked from the seed stage of the plant, all the way through to consumers the finished products at a dispensary.

While the particulars of each state regulation system vary, each facility needs to track quite a lot of data. We can simplify the ease of getting data into these systems through the use of APIs, hardware integrations, and overall system integrations with the software used to run cannabis facilities. This is no different than a typical Track and Trace implementation using something like Sepasoft’s Track and Trace module, the data just ends up in a different database to meet the regulatory needs.

Growth

While the science and horticulture behind growing optimal plants is anything but simple, many of the control systems used in grow facilities are not terribly complex. Lights, airflow, nutrients, and sometimes some great tunes on a playlist are all managed by standalone systems. Ancillary systems like water filtration, nutrient mixing, and of course the various seed to sale requirements like barcodes or RFID tags are all required to support the grow operation—but might be difficult to integrate with the control system itself.

This can be a huge opportunity to integrate various systems. Many facilities we have visited need to open two or more applications for a full picture of the grow operation with all of the supporting systems. Many of these systems use industry standard protocols, so tying them into industry standard manufacturing tools like Ignition is an easy proposition. You just need to decide it is time to stop dealing with multiple systems to get the job done when it can be easily simplified.

New Horizons

Even 5-10 years ago, it was common for integrators to joke that they didn’t do work for cannabis companies because it was hard to deposit a duffle bag full of cash at the bank. While there were unscrupulous companies operating under the radar, cannabis is now an industry focused on doing the right thing, turning out amazing products, and building long term relationships with happy customers. Yes, there will still be some folks who do things under the table, however they aren’t going to be seeking the right tools to make the best product in a positive environment.

As with any manufacturing enterprise, these tools in order of adoption are usually automated equipment, Process Historians, OEE and Downtime Tracking, then more involved Manufacturing Execution System (MES) implementations to tie the plant floor into the entire business—from customer orders to shipping and receiving, giving you a true “top floor to shop floor” technology platform.

This is the same focus we have at Corso Systems. Do the right thing, build strong relationships, and make the world a better place. We happen to really enjoy technology, problem solving, and developing things at the forefront of industry revolutions to help innovate manufacturing at the next level.

We believe there is a huge opportunity to help build the capability, mindset, and throughput of the cannabis industry by leveraging what we already do, learning how to apply that to each facility’s operational strategy, and developing the next industry standard solutions to grow cannabis as a cornerstone of American Manufacturing.

Updated - 6/17/2022