Wolfgang Stegmaier, Digital Transformation Manager at FRITSCH, explains how the company’s Smart Services help bakers boost efficiency and prepare for a digital future
In this exclusive Ask the Expert interview, Wolfgang Stegmaier, Digital Transformation Manager at FRITSCH, delves into how Smart Production Insights (SPI) and the Watchdog tool are enabling proactive decision-making, reducing downtime, and unlocking new levels of production visibility. From predictive maintenance to cloud-based performance dashboards, these tools empower stakeholders across the operation—from shift leaders to maintenance teams—with actionable, data-driven insights. Stegmaier also shares how these innovations are supporting broader sustainability goals and hints at what’s next on the horizon, including the role of AI in optimising line performance. With FRITSCH’s digital services offering a scalable, cloud-connected ecosystem, bakeries are better equipped than ever to streamline operations and boost efficiency—batch after batch.
How do Smart Services like Smart Production Insights (SPI) and the Watchdog fit into FRITSCH’s vision for future-ready industrial bakery production?
Our aim is to achieve maximum transparency in production and the respective status of the production line by collecting data and making recommendations for action in advance, before a component has the chance to fail. This is exactly where FRITSCH’s digital solutions come in. The first step in that regard is evident in our Smart Services. The Smart Production Insights (SPI) assist in monitoring the key performance data of the line in real time. Whereas our Watchdog highlights to the customers where predictive maintenance is needed on the line to avoid unplanned equipment downtime.
What specific challenges in bakery line operation and maintenance prompted the development of SPI and the Watchdog?
We want to give our customers a live insight into their production and thus ensure the highest degree of transparency to increase the efficiency of their line. Often, these are only fleeting problems that interrupt production for just a couple of seconds. However, if that occurs multiple times during the whole shift, then it all adds up to an unplanned loss of production in the end. The Smart Production Insights (SPI) give production and shift managers real-time insights into the most important performance data of the line via a clear dashboard. Even downtimes caused by minor malfunctions are clearly recorded, so that measures to prevent them can be initiated quickly and easily. By continuously collecting data and visualising key performance indicators in real time, significant improvements in overall line efficiency can be achieved.
The Watchdog monitors all of the drives on the entire line. It does this by measuring and continuously analysing the motor current and temperature of each drive. As soon as the value calculated by algorithms reaches a specified deviation from the defined target value, a warning is sent to a defined group of people, who can react accordingly before the drive unit becomes damaged or even destroyed.
Could you walk us through how data is captured, processed and visualised via the Smart Services platform, and what the role of the MULTIVAC Cloud is in that process?
Customers require constant Internet access to ensure data flows from the equipment to the cloud. The only hardware requirement for operating Smart Services is the installation of a small controller, a so-called edge device. We retrieve data from the line control and send it to the MULTIVAC cloud. Processing routines run in the cloud, which fill the SPI and the Watchdog. We use the data exclusively to optimise the processes of the respective customer and treat it as strictly confidential.
The visualisation of the SPI is divided into three areas: dashboard, messages and maintenance. On the dashboard production or shift mangers can easily follow the current production live. They can directly see the availability of the equipment and the performance in terms of number of pieces produced or compare results between different shifts. From a simple tabular overview, they can also immediately recognise how the equipment has been operating in the last 24 hours. Even minor malfunctions that occur occasionally during production are recorded and displayed on the dashboard. So far, it has been impossible for those responsible for production to respond to these brief disruptions because they are not even detected. Our customers can now inspect the SPI data to find out exactly what causes these faults and take the right steps to prevent further equipment downtimes caused by them. It’s a little like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack. SPI gives valuable indications of where this needle is to be found.
All error messages are listed in the message area with information, occurrence and end of the error as well as the duration. The data in the dashboard enables simple analysis and timely countermeasures in case of discrepancies. Upcoming maintenance work is shown in the maintenance area. A log is kept of which maintenance is to be carried out and when it was carried out.
Read the full interview in our latest issue here
