APPLICATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES IN FOOD PROCESSING

Information technologies (IT) have become an important part of modern peoples activities. Many activities in food production processes are supported by different types of IT. The aim of this paper is to determine share of companies in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), Serbia (SRB), North Macedonia (MKD) and Montenegro (MNE) that use some form of IT in their operations. Research was conducted in companies from the food sector in four countries in the Balkans. The research included 42 companies from BiH, 30 companies from Serbia, 14 companies from MKD and 6 companies from MNE. A special questionnaire was designed for the purposes of this research. The distribution of the questionnaire was done by e-mail, with a digital link for the users according to the form of the survey questionnaire that they should fill out (Microsoft Forms). The obtained results were statistically processed using IBM SPSS Statistics 26.During the research, authors determined areas in which companies already use IT, their plans related to the development of IT in the coming period and possibly for integration of existing and new IT solutions into a single information system. In their answers, the companies declared about the business areas in which they most often apply IT. Companies have developed and use several e-databases (the share of companies from each country is shown in relation to the number of companies that submitted complete survey questionnaires in the order of BiH, SRB, MKD and MNE): e-database of employees (88.1%); 96.7%; 100% and 100%, respectable), supplier base (73.8%; 100%; 100% and 83.3%, respectable), e-customer base (76.2%; 96.7%; 100% and 100%, respectable), e-base of resources for work (35.7%; 60.0%; 42.9% and 50.0%, respectable), e-base of reports on performed laboratory analyzes (35 .7%; 43.3%, 50.0% and 50.0%, respectively) etc. In the development of IT solutions, companies use different programming languages, mostly JAVA (59.3% of all companies surveyed) and C++ (37.4% of the total number of companies surveyed). The research showed that companies in the food sector in 4 Balkan countries use different forms of IT and that they have clear plans for their development and application in their business. It encourages the view that most companies are working on development of an integrated information system.