Since opening in 1997, Hill Country Bakery has built a reputation around the quality of its products and its production processes. In fact, the maker of coffee cakes, muffins, and decadent bars has a longstanding history of producing great baked goods. And, that has earned the San Antonio, TX company a Safe Quality Food (SQF) Level 2 certification from the SQF Institute, which is recognized by the Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI).
Hill Country Bakery has four plants, plus a 55,000 square foot off-site cold storage distribution center for housing ingredients and finished goods. Temperatures in the warehouse need to be monitored and kept within a narrow range to ensure product quality and safety.
The distribution center has multiple refrigeration zones, and, it had been using hard-wired temperature probes to collect and monitor temperature data. Hill Country Bakery was not satisfied with this aging temperature monitoring system. Specifically, problems crept up with the connecting wires, which were prone to damage by forklift trucks, for example, that could temporarily interrupt the continuous collection of data. In addition, the method for data collection was inefficient, temperature readings had to be manually logged into a database for reporting—a time-consuming task with inherent risk of human error.
So the bakery turned to Patti Engineering, a CSIA Certified control systems integrator offering engineering and software development services. Patti Engineering designed and implemented a more advanced and automated temperature monitoring system. The integrator used wireless sensors from FreshLoc Technologies and developed a customized HMI and SCADA system using Schneider Electric’s InduSoft Web Studio software platform.
