The mechatronic bakery

Large-scale bread bakeries generally exist as ‘Islands of Control’ - a long line of processes interrelated, but not interconnected in terms of their control systems. To successfully implement a control system that encompasses the entire bakery, much information must be gathered and processed in such a form that process and control engineers can deduce control algorithms. This project involved the instrumentation of an entire bakery with a view to providing production reports that merge the processes. New methods of tracking products through the entire process were investigated and tested. Methods were also proposed and tested to log temperature/humidities of various bakery processes and align with products passing through to produce a loaf/time/temperature profile.