Abstract
Acquisition and continuous evaluation of the operational data is a key factor to effective course of every industrial process. Laundry care services with various process media (water, steam, natural gas, electricity, detergents, etc.) are described in this paper as a model process. Consistent measurements of these operational commodities are often neglected, as we observed in many European laundry facilities. However, no process can be evaluated and efficiently controlled on a long-term basis without operational data. Impact of changes of process parameter setting cannot be identified then, either. This paper deals with professional laundry facilities, and their technical equipment in the area of operational data acquisition. Process media which are worth monitoring are described here as well as the required measurement equipment and its integration into the process.
This paper aims to inform laundry facility operators that integration of field instrumentation into the process must be performed during the facility construction and/or reconstruction phase(s). Investments into rudimentary measurement system greatly outweigh cost of technology equipment. And advantages of data acquisition are numerous. Case study presents several options for monitoring in a laundry facility with given technology equipment, and tries to guide through the measurements.
Paper also describes a sophisticated system of measurement and data processing which may serve for detailed analysis of laundry care process. This system was designed and implemented within the scope of the NETME Centre project, Brno University of Technology, which allowed for creation of a unique facility researching laundry processes (washing, drying). A database of measuring instruments is part of this system, and allows the user to interconnect information about the measurement instruments with measured data. It makes creation of system output report much easier. We expect that the system may be applied in other industrial areas.
