Miller Magazine Issue: 129 September 2020

60 MILLER / September 2020 Modern flour mills are highly complex sys- tems. Each individual system component, whether it is involved in the arrival of raw ma- terials or in the cleaning, grinding, storage or bagging of the finished product, is a highly so- phisticated piece of machinery that works with utmost precision and accuracy. The only scope left for improvement is in the finer details. To optimize further, we need to look at the po- tential of linking the individual system compo- nents together and in the possibilities offered by autonomy. Bühler is working flat out on de- veloping the building blocks for what we call the “Smart Mill”. Grain Milling Technologist, Urs Dübendorfer, who has been with Bühler AG for 28 years and is a member of the Smart Mill Development Team, explains how much progress Bühler has already made in this area. Urs Dübendorfer, how would you describe a Smart Mill? In a Smart Mill many of the process steps are monitored by sensors. Data from the different parts of the system is collected centrally and analyzed using special algorithms. The most important feature of a Smart Mill is that if de- “When I talk to leading millers, they all want three things: consistent quality, lower costs and complete traceability. That requires smart systems — they support the most consistent product quality possible, they help to use energy and other resources sparingly, they enable the recording of every process and, in doing so, they also enable complete traceability.” Making the Smart Mill a reality Urs Dübendorfer Grain Milling Technologist Smart Mill Development Team Bühler AG