Quality control in Dairy food

SpectralizeR and FactorAI applied to

cheese production for full production cycle control

Context

Industrial cheese production requires accurate control of product quality characteristics to ensure both quality and food safety, and it often relies heavily on the experience and personal sensitivity of the cheesemaker. Thanks to Near Infrared (NIR) spectroscopy, it is possible to rapidly and non-destructively analyze multiple physico-chemical parameters—such as moisture, fat, protein, lactose, and pH—while ensuring consistent quality levels for customers.

The use of NIR technology combined with SpectralizeR and FactorAI enables monitoring of the entire production process without wasting samples, reducing analysis time and increasing control frequency. This provides a clear competitive advantage: every batch can be analyzed in-line, enabling proactive and continuous quality management.

The challenge

In the production of soft cheeses, maintaining a stable fat-to-protein/HCD ratio, as well as consistent product density, is essential to ensure texture, shelf life, and food safety. Significant variations in these parameters can lead to non-compliant products, waste, and returns, with substantial economic impact.

Production therefore requires a system capable of monitoring the entire production chain in real time—from verifying the characteristics of incoming milk at each production cycle (to adjust process settings accordingly) to real-time curd monitoring for the standardization of coagulation and cutting time.

Comprehensive control across all key stages of the cheese-making process makes it possible to prevent anomalies and detect deviations from quality limits without slowing down production or relying on destructive sampling.ators that would allow for quick reading of progress data, nor did it have systems to identify corrective actions needed to make processes sustainable. It was necessary to identify the causes and remedies to reduce machine downtime, energy costs, and raw material consumption, while ensuring the quality of the final product.

Our Solution

Our Approach

To address these needs, a SpectralizeR-based process control system, integrated with FactorAI was implemented. The operational workflow includes:

NIR Probes

Installation of food-grade probes equipped with NIR spectrometers at two key analytical points, using probes capable of acquiring signals in diffuse reflectance and transflectance modes.

Data Analysis

Data preprocessing and Applicability Domain modeling: cleaning and selection of relevant NIR data to ensure robust and reliable models at both critical production stages.

Calibration

Development and training of calibration models: calibration of NIR parameters to correlate spectral signals acquired at two moments—milk analysis and curd formation—with:

fat and protein content of the cheese
curd flake density during coagulation, identified through time-dependent absorbance reduction, which determines curd density and correlates with the optimal cutting time.

DSS

Development of a Decision Support System, featuring:

Real-time monitoring and visualization of key quality attributes
Detection of anomalies and process drift
Dynamic MSPC models for each cheese SKU
Training Area enabling autonomous recalibration of chemometric models

Thanks to this solution, the production team can respond promptly to process drifts and maintain high-quality standards without interrupting production.

Results

The integration of SpectralizeR enables the company to:

Reduce drift and anomalies along the production line;
Ensure compliance with quality standards for every single unit produced;
Optimize the entire production process by reducing both the cheesemaker’s subjective variability and overall waste and scrap;
Enable autonomous retraining of chemometric models to adapt to seasonal changes or raw material variability.

In summary, adopting SpectralizeR transforms quality control from a sporadic and destructive activity into a continuous, predictive, and reliable process, ensuring consistent and safe products at an industrial scale.