A low-cost condition monitoring solution for industrial bakery equipment

Artisanal bakeries perform a critical function in many societies all over the world. However, artisanal bakers struggle to compete with commercial bakeries’ efficiencies due to the lack of technology deployment. One aspect that could lead to significant improvements of up to 36% are improved maintenance processes. Unfortunately the prohibitive costs associated with commercial condition monitoring equipment and a lack of proven efficiency improvements in the artisanal bakery hamper the adoption of such technologies. In this work a low-cost, remote, condition monitoring and measurement system is developed that makes use of commercial off-the-shelf technology. The prototype system provides immediate return on investment to the baker and maintenance staff while at the same time gathering high-resolution data for the development of more advanced diagnostic algorithms. The latter is especially of importance due to the lack of diagnostic algorithms capable of handling the variance introduced by the viscosity characteristics of dough and other mixer products