Responding to the growing demands for traceability in various production phases and production efficiency, RAM Elettronica offers innovative solutions through the «RAM – Efficiency Supervisor» project. This project is the result of a synergistic collaboration with RINA Consulting, Tesar Automation, within the PIA investment plan funded by the Puglia Region.
«RAM – Efficiency Supervisor» is an Advanced Manufacturing System (AMS) capable of monitoring, tracing, and supervising the entire production cycle of pasta factories and mills. Innovative aspects include the exploration of new moisture detection methods in pasta to ensure rapid control suitable for the speeds of automated production lines, while simultaneously reducing production waste. Using Artificial Intelligence techniques, the system, installed in a pilot pasta factory, can inline monitor the moisture percentage of the «pasta» product downstream of drying, before packaging. The proposed solution provides a decision support system for plant technologists, allowing them to assess and understand the causes of product moisture before packaging (every process data and human correction/setpoint action will contribute to determining the downstream moisture value). Through artificial intelligence techniques, the technologist is suggested the most suitable solution.
Another crucial aspect in the pasta and milling industry is process and product traceability with MES (Manufacturing Execution System). Monolithic solutions are no longer feasible due to the continuous technological evolution of hardware components, the introduction of new lines (coexisting with older ones), and new sensors added to production to control the process/product. RAM Elettronica has addressed this dynamism with a new MES, a flexible and scalable tracking system. A microservices architecture allows tracking the evolution of the pasta mill over time, with the ability to quickly manage the introduction of new elements to track, design new flows, and handle peak applications.
AGROQUALITÀ S.p.A. has certified the MES’s ability to exchange traceability metadata with the SIAN telematic register «Cereal Production Register» by controlling all product and process attributes required by the current legislation «Discipline and procedural application for monitoring cereal production present on the national territory,» Decree of March 29, 2022, published in the Official Gazette no.121 of May 25, 2022.»
