RELAY FOR FOOD & BEVERAGE MANUFACTURING

The minutes after an alarm are where your uptime disappears.

Between an alarm firing and the right tech arriving, in the right language and with the right parts, a stopped line waits. That’s where the biggest losses happen. Relay closes that gap on the floor you already run.

The three things you're trying to get right

Your downtime, your language gaps, and your audit trail are all communication problems.

The gap between everyday OEE and world-class often isn’t the maintenance plan; it’s what happens in the minutes after an alarm fires. Relay works on all three.

82%

of manufacturers rely on people to manually relay information between teams, shifts, and systems because their tools don’t talk to each other. The most critical intelligence on your floor is what your workers already know and say out loud, and it’s being lost. We call it signal evaporation.

Relay Research, survey of 500 full-time U.S. manufacturing professionals, August 2026.

Downtime

Minutes pile up in the gap between an alarm and the right tech.

Language gaps

Handoffs and repairs land in the wrong language, every shift.

Audit trail

Sign-offs get logged from memory at end of shift, if at all.

HOW IT WORKS

Three jobs, one radio your team already knows.

The alarm fires. The right tech is already on the way, with context.

MTTR is a communication problem before it’s a maintenance one, and these disruptions aren’t edge cases. 41% of manufacturers hit them at least weekly and 32% say each takes one to four hours to resolve.‡

3-5x

ROI within the first planned downtime event.
‡Relay Research, Aug 2026
Two plant workers in hairnets and work jackets talking on a food and beverage production floor near processing equipment

Take language gaps out of the hiring decision, and out of every repair.

When a worker can’t describe a failure clearly, the tech arrives cold and MTTR stretches. On a multilingual floor, that friction repeats every shift.

35

languages translated in real time inside the communication flow. No stopping to tap or type, no change to how the floor works.
Plant manager walking through a food manufacturing facility

Your sanitation sign-offs and LOTO steps, captured as you say them.

Digital forms don’t get filled when hands are gloved and the line is moving. Only 20% of manufacturers say their CMMS very accurately reflects what happens on the floor, and 83% say teams improvise because the information they needed was never captured.‡

90-day

timestamped, exportable record of floor communication, a documentation trail that paper logs and verbal handoffs can’t match, and one that compounds the longer you run.
‡Relay Research, Aug 2026
Worker kneeling at floor drain during sanitation check at a beverage manufacturing facility
The numbers, from our customers

What changes when your lines run on Relay.

3x

Faster resolution: routine issues from 15 minutes to 5–6.

150%

Better connectivity across the plant, where legacy radios drop.

6x

Faster response: critical messages reach the right team and get acted on.

Day one

Immediate time to value: insight and action, tied together, value from the first shift.
Proof from the floor

The floor sells it better than we can.

“Some of the little things in the plant used to take 15 minutes — now it's 5, 6 minutes. They call it out, show up with the right tools, and address the issue.”

Marcus, Plant Manager, Leading F&B Manufacturer

“Our Spanish-speaking employees now feel they're listened to, more part of the team. With Relay, there's been a lot of change.”

José Luis Vàsquez, Production Manager, Poppies Bakeries

“We have 100% coverage everywhere in our building. We've never had that before.”

Tom Houtz, CSP, Corp. Director of Safety & Compliance, Dutch Valley Foods

“It creates a lot of value in a safety-first business. It belongs there.”

Jim, VP, Leading F&B Manufacturer

The hardware behind the layer

RelayX: built for the production floor.

The problem on the floor isn’t the screen; it’s breaking your work pattern to tap, type, or walk to a terminal. Relay is voice-first and built for gloves, 110 dB noise, and washdowns, so information moves in whatever fits the moment: voice, a photo sent from the Relay Communicator app, or the desktop, without anyone breaking stride.

Front and back view of RelayX communication device with a circular LED interface, screen display, and side buttons.

Steady Link™

Multi-patented carrier redundancy; messages route around outages in under a second.

IP68 + IP69K durability

Mil-Spec tested and washdown-safe for processing environments.

TeamTranslate™

Real-time translation across 35 languages, on the device.

Remote Shoulder Mic

IP69K-rated, food-safe, and GMP-compliant, lets a worker move freely away from the device and still speak and hear clearly in loud environments.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does Relay reduce downtime and improve OEE in a food manufacturing plant?

Most of the delay in an unplanned stoppage happens before anyone touches the machine: the alarm sits on a busy channel, the wrong tech gets dispatched, and they arrive without the failure described. Relay routes the alert the moment it fires, indoor location shows the closest available tech, and a 1:1 call starts before they leave the floor. That’s the minutes gap that separates everyday OEE from world-class.

Is Relay a replacement for our CMMS?

No. Relay works in tandem. Your CMMS only knows what gets entered, and most unplanned maintenance is communicated over radio and logged from memory at end of shift, if at all. Relay creates the real-time input the CMMS was never getting: transcription and location turn floor conversations into work-order context. Relay is the system of action for physical operations: it captures what your frontline actually says and does, and turns it into action in the systems you already run.

How does Relay handle a multilingual workforce?

TeamTranslate™ provides real-time translation across 35 languages inside the communication flow, not as a separate app. That removes language requirements from a frontline hiring decision, shortens onboarding, and keeps a language barrier from turning a 15-minute handoff into 30.

Can Relay help with FSMA and OSHA documentation?

Relay captures verbal confirmations (drain tests, sanitation sign-offs, and LOTO communication) as timestamped, location-verified records, as a byproduct of normal communication. It’s an audit-ready trail of what was actually said on the floor, without asking workers to stop and fill out a form.

Are the devices safe for washdown and food-contact environments?

RelayX is rated IP68 and IP69K, Mil-Spec tested, and washdown-safe. The Remote Shoulder Mic is IP69K-rated, food-safe, and GMP-compliant, built specifically for Food & Beverage Manufacturing floor environments.

Will our team actually adopt it, or is it one more thing that interrupts their work?

Relay is voice-first and works the way a two-way radio already does: gloves on, in high noise, nothing to stop and open. It fits the flow of work instead of adding a step to it. Adoption is fastest where the pain is most acute: start on the highest-downtime line, and when techs arrive with the right parts the first time, the floor sells it for you.

STARTS WHERE IT HURTS MOST

See it on your floor.

Your downtime, your language gaps, and your audit trail are all communication problems. Let us show you the minutes you can get back, starting with your highest-downtime line.