Miller Magazine Issue: 142 October 2021

69 COVER STORY MILLER / OCTOber 2021 feedback observations in real time conditions in which we are dealing with client expectations and production pressures. Running and maintaining a mill is very differ- ent from building one.” THE MILL E3 IN ACTION The concept of the Mill E3 centers on the idea of us- ing modular “plug and play” installation of milling equip- ment to cut the installation time by up to 30%. It also cuts building costs by reducing the volume of the mill. Mills can significantly reduce their running costs thanks to en- ergy efficient equipment and making full use of digital services. The Arrius fully integrated grinding system, a key com- ponent of the Mill E3, provides lower energy consump- tion, faster installation, along with the highest food safety standards, reliability, and optimum grinding performance. At the Whitley Bridge plant, the Arrius grinding technol- ogy has been used at scale for the first time. “The wheat coming into the mill is first checked by online sensors to establish its key parameters,” explains Andrew Thom- son, Technical Miller for Whitworth Bros. “But then the sensors in the Arrius rechecks and controls the distri- bution of the feed, which allows the grinding system to adapt again to the changing characteristics of the wheat at the point of milling. It is this unique usage of sensor technology that ensures optimal grinding parameters are achieved at all times.” The layout of the mill is designed for optimal perfor- mance with easy equipment accessibility for mainte- nance. Preassembled and tested blower modules are designed for quick “plug and play” installation. They are housed in containers outside the building enabling the most efficient pneumatic transfer of product throughout the plant. DIGITAL SOLUTIONS TO HELP DELIVER TARGETS Sensors feed data every few seconds to Bühler Mer- cury Manufacturing Execution System (MES) to facilitate control of every aspect of the mill’s internal workings and to the IoT platform Bühler Insights where algorithms com- pare past and present production and process parame- ters. This ensures the mill is always operating at optimal efficiency to achieve the most consistent high-quality product achievable. “What is most exciting about the technology is that it provides the operator with data in real time, which en- ables the miller to take key and well-informed decisions about the plant,” explains Peters. “We feel at Whitworth Bros. that we are pioneering and what we need to under- stand through the 15,000 data points are the optimum machine parameters required to ensure the continued manufacturing of high-quality products using digital tech- nologies. Once that is defined accurately you can then be more exact in the way you set up your mill process and further push your process capabilities.” Other service modules used in the Mill E3 include for instance the Temperature and Vibration Management Service (TVM), Yield Management System (YMS), Error and Downtime Analysis (EDA), Overall Equipment Effec- tiveness (OEE) and Replay. Together these provide con- tinual data feeds on machine and process trends, poten- tial maintenance issues and how machine performance relates to quality and efficiency. “The SmartMill services are like having a lot of Lego Andrew Thomson Technical Miller Whitworth Bros. Ltd. Mike Peters Managing Director of Whitworth Bros. Ltd. Roman Sonderegger Head of Business Unit Wheat & Rye at Bühler