RUBICS
Boutique IoT-based Solutions for Food Safety

Stated in the simplest terms, World Health Organization (WHO) reports, globally around one in 10 people fall ill every year by consuming contaminated food and water, resulting in approximately 420,000 deaths worldwide. The alarming statistics demand the need for a solution that ensures highest standards in food safety management. The adoption of Internet of Things (IoT) is revolutionizing the way food industry works creating more closely monitored environments that result in better food safety and less waste. This enhanced visibility provides actionable information for better management of the supply chain, from production to transportation to retail sales. Leveraging this technology at its best is the Lebanon-based RUBICS offering boutique IoT solutions specifically focused on the food and beverage industry.

“Riding on the wave of IoT at its rise, RUBICS was incepted in 2014 and today, we deliver smart wireless automation and industrial IoT (IIoT) solutions for food safety management,” says Mohannad Y. Salam, Founder and CEO of RUBICS. The firm integrates robust industrial level hardware with proprietary software applications, for analysis, monitoring, reporting, and business intelligence, in real-time to ensure the safety and quality of food. The RUBICS’ solution instantly alerts production managers whenever any deviation from the desired temperature setting is observed. The robust and reliable sensors reap in numerous advantages over the legacy complex and cumbersome analytical laboratory methods, by providing real-time analysis, high sensitivity, hygienic check, and selectivity of food.

Benefiting from a strong and strategic common interest with Microsoft, “RUBICS utilizes Azure Cloud services to capture, document, and report instantly all parameters that have effect on food safety to meet and exceed the FDA’s model food code,” says Salam. RUBICS’ cloud platform is directed toward helping government initiatives and small business organizations to go deep into any organization’s manufacturing facility and check on the desired parameters in detail ensuring complete feasibility during inspections. Using RUBICS’ full-fledged software, the regulatory bodies can have complete details about the processed food, for instance, temperature excursions in a variety of environments, without having the need for inspectors to manually carry out the inspection process.

RUBICS utilizes Azure Cloud services to capture, document, and report the temperature, quality and humidity values of the food to meet and exceed the FDA’s model food code

“We understand the client’s environment and provide solutions that conform to the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) standards,” elaborates Salam. RUBICS’ innovative wireless technology base in tandem with cloud-based data hosting and processing results in improved product safety, ensures regulatory compliance and optimizes costs associated with inspection activities.

As a testimony to RUBICS’ proficiency in helping organizations check on their food quality and acting upon it, Salam elaborates a case in point, where they assisted a food factory with large-scale operations. The client was finding it difficult to maintain the optimal temperature of storing the fruits and ran into a lot of problems leading to food wastage and inferior end product quality. On using RUBICS platform, the client was able to get complete data on the food temperature 24/7 and be alerted during temperature fluctuations. The problem was traced out to be the malfunctioning of the defrost, which was due to the non maintenance of the equipment. The problem was thereby rectified and the temperature was maintained at the desired level.

For the road ahead, alongside their focus on building more and more partnerships in the Gulf region, RUBICS is concentrating on expanding their footprint in the drug industry and is awaiting FDI approval for their drug industry-specific platform. Furthermore, the company is planning to integrate new technologies like blockchain and virtual reality to build more features to their platform, empowering food safety managers with greater ability to track the product until it reaches the end consumer.