In the high-volume environment of industrial food manufacturing, the management of bulk ingredients represents a critical logistical challenge. Whether storing powders such as flour and sugar or liquids like oils, vinegar, and citric acid, the ability to maintain precise inventory visibility is paramount. Most sites already operate local monitoring arrangements, whether through gauges, local HMIs, or existing level instrumentation, but these arrangements do not always make the data readily available to offsite decision-makers.
As production schedules become increasingly complex and supply chains more volatile, the role of Sitewatch Anywhere is to extend existing site visibility by moving critical silo data into the cloud. This allows inventory position, usage trends, and refill planning data to be shared more effectively with suppliers, logistics teams, and billing staff, regardless of where they are located.
Technical Complexities: Liquids vs. Powders
The physical properties of ingredients dictate the instrumentation required for accurate measurement. Liquids, such as vegetable oils or vinegar, generally maintain a uniform, level surface due to gravity. This allows for relatively straightforward measurement using hydrostatic pressure sensors or ultrasonic level transmitters. However, powders and granulated solids present a significantly more complex set of variables.
The Challenge of Coning and Bridging
When solids like flour or sugar are loaded into a silo, they do not settle evenly. Instead, they form a “cone” or “peak” at the entry point. Conversely, as material is drawn from the bottom, an inverted cone or “rathole” can form. This phenomenon, known as coning, can lead to significant errors in volume calculation if measured by a single-point sensor. A sensor measuring the peak will over-report inventory, while one measuring the trough will under-report, potentially leading to critical stockouts.
To mitigate these inaccuracies, Lee-Dickens employs advanced signal processing within the Sitewatch Anywhere ecosystem. Converting a measured height into a meaningful volume or weight is also technically challenging where vessels are not simple cylinders, particularly where conical bottoms, dished sections, or horizontal cylindrical tanks are involved.
Lee-Dickens has extensive experience in linearising these irregular shapes so that reported stock figures remain technically credible and operationally useful. Where the highest measurement certainty is required, weigh scales remain the preferred method and the ultimate gold standard, because they are unaffected by coning, bridging, product surface profile, vessel geometry, dielectric variation, or liquid properties, and therefore perform equally well for both powders and liquids. Where direct level sensing is used, the preferred instrumentation is typically Vega radar technology for its precision and repeatability, although existing legacy sensors already installed on site can also be integrated without difficulty. By integrating appropriate sensing hardware and applying sophisticated algorithms, the system can calculate a true inventory position while accounting for the irregular topography of the material surface.
Handling Erratic Usage Patterns
Food production rarely follows a perfectly linear consumption model. Seasonal demand, machine downtime, and batch-specific requirements lead to erratic use patterns. Standard monitoring systems that rely on simple “high/low” alarms are reactive; they notify operators only when a crisis is imminent.
Sitewatch Anywhere utilises historical data to transition from reactive monitoring to proactive management. The platform analyses consumption rates over time, filtering out “noise” and temporary fluctuations to provide a steady-state consumption trend.
Remote dashboards are configured to present usage analysis, live silo level displays, and trend data, allowing operators and logistics planners to review both current inventory position and rate-of-use behaviour from a single interface. Bespoke schematic layouts can also be provided through the web-based platform, so the screen presentation reflects the customer’s actual process rather than a generic dashboard.
When local site data is made available through the cloud, the same information can be reviewed by production, logistics, supplier, and commercial teams without requiring them to be physically present at the plant. This is particularly useful where stock planning, tanker scheduling, and invoice verification are handled across different offices or by third-party partners.
Sitewatch Anywhere can also monitor multiple silos of different sizes as separate assets while presenting a combined aggregate inventory figure for the site as a whole. This allows individual stock positions to be reviewed without losing sight of total material availability across the facility.
This allows the system to generate two critical metrics:
- Expected Time to Empty (ETE): A countdown based on the current rate of consumption, informing production managers exactly how much operational runway remains.
- Possible Refill Point: This identifies the earliest moment a delivery can be accepted without risking a silo overfill, known as ullage management.
Optimising Delivery Logistics and Ullage Management
The cost of logistics in the food sector is high, and failed deliveries due to insufficient silo capacity, often known as “blow-backs”, are both expensive and a significant safety risk. Ullage, the volume of empty space available in a silo, must be calculated with absolute precision before a tanker is dispatched.
A primary benefit for logistics managers using Sitewatch Anywhere is the ability to synchronise deliveries with real-world capacity. The system ensures that a tanker is only called when there is sufficient ullage to accept a full load. This prevents part-load surcharges and minimises the carbon footprint of the supply chain.
Associate accounts can also be provided, allowing inventory and usage data to be shared directly with third-party logistics teams or suppliers so that delivery planning can be streamlined across the wider supply chain.
“Our bakery customers were often relying on incomplete stock visibility when managing their flour silo refills,” notes a Lead Engineer at a major UK flour mill. “That created avoidable delivery inefficiencies, particularly where the ’empty’ silo was actually a third full due to coning. The live data and predictive refill windows have made refill planning much more controlled.”
The Complexity of Active Delivery Measurement
A recurring technical issue in the industry is the estimation of delivery amounts when the product is being drawn from the silo during the delivery process. In a continuous production environment, the intake cannot always be isolated.
Sitewatch Anywhere resolves this by correlating the flow rate of the production line (draw-down) with the increase in silo level (intake). By subtracting the known discharge rate from the observed level increase, the system can provide a highly accurate estimation of the actual quantity delivered by the supplier. This data is vital for financial auditing and verifying that the manufacturer is receiving exactly what has been invoiced.
High-Integrity Infrastructure and Security
As food manufacturing is part of the UK’s critical national infrastructure, the security and reliability of telemetry data are non-negotiable. Sitewatch Anywhere is designed for maximum resilience, boasting a 99.97% uptime track record.
At field level, the standard telemetry hardware is the Mini RTU, a compact and cost-effective solution for remote monitoring that provides the high-integrity data link required for dependable Sitewatch Anywhere operation in demanding industrial environments. The Mini RTU is typically used for monitoring one or two silos.
For three or more silos, the preferred arrangement is either additional Mini RTUs or the Midi-10 RTU, depending on the number of signals and the wider site requirements. The Midi-10 can handle dozens of silos and is suited to larger silo farms or more complex monitoring duties.
This is the “Intelligent Modular Solution”, built around a high-performance processor with battery-backed RAM and designed as a wall-mounting unit with broader I/O capacity and modular expansion for high-integrity monitoring across larger silo farms and wider process applications. Although the focus here is silo monitoring, the Midi-10 RTU can accommodate a much wider range of inputs across a site, making it suitable for full plant-wide monitoring rather than being limited to inventory measurement alone.
Where required, the Midi-10 RTU can be installed in a panel or alongside DIN rail equipment, but it is equally at home as a standalone wall-mounted unit. The main advantage is its modular architecture and its ability to deliver dependable monitoring across multiple assets and process signals.
The standard Sitewatch Anywhere model is a subscription-based service. The subscription provides the data SIM card, cloud account hosting, secure data access, and remote support activities such as configuration updates and scaling changes. It is generally the most economical option because the IT overhead remains with Lee-Dickens rather than the customer.
For any site-based maintenance requirement, a comprehensive maintenance plan can be added to provide field-based service support and preventative maintenance. Maintenance is available in Bronze, Silver, and Gold tiers. The Silver plan is generally the recommended option, providing a 24-month preventative maintenance cycle together with free parts replacement, excluding lightning damage. For more critical installations, the Gold plan provides a 12-month preventative maintenance cycle and includes lightning protection measures within the service package.
One of the key advantages of Sitewatch Anywhere is that it can be accessed by the customer on any browser on any device, with no software installation required. Where a customer prefers to retain infrastructure on-site, a local server can also be provided as an alternative deployment model:
- Private APN/VPN: Data is transmitted over private cellular networks, bypassing the public internet to prevent interception.
- SSL Encryption: All communication between the field hardware and the cloud server is protected by Industry-standard Secure Sockets Layer protocols.
- UK-Based Data Sovereignty: All data is hosted and managed within the UK, ensuring compliance with domestic data regulations.
Unrivalled Technical Support
Unlike generic “off-the-shelf” IoT solutions, Sitewatch Anywhere is backed by over 60 years of Lee-Dickens engineering expertise. Based in Kettering, our technical support team provides office-hours support as standard, ensuring that critical infrastructure receives informed technical assistance from engineers familiar with the application.
Official support is provided within office hours, although goodwill out-of-hours support is also provided whenever possible. When a food manufacturer contacts the support desk, they are speaking to engineers who understand the nuances of process instrumentation and the specific challenges of the food manufacturing environment.
Conclusion: A Partnership for Precision
The transition to Sitewatch Anywhere represents more than a hardware upgrade; it is a practical enhancement to existing monitoring arrangements. By mastering the physics of powder and liquid measurement and applying predictive logistics, food manufacturers can significantly reduce waste, prevent stockouts, and streamline their supply chain.
About LEE-DICKENS Ltd.
Established in 1962, LEE-DICKENS Ltd. specialises in the design and manufacture of high-integrity industrial and military process monitoring and control systems. From our UK headquarters, we provide bespoke engineering solutions ranging from signal conditioning equipment to the comprehensive Sitewatch Anywhere telemetry platform. Our commitment to reliability and technical excellence has made us a trusted partner for critical infrastructure management across the industrial, military, and utility sectors.
Optimise your logistics and prevent costly stockouts. Contact our engineering team today to discuss a bespoke Sitewatch Anywhere solution for your facility.
For further information on our range of telemetry and monitoring solutions, visit our products page or explore our cloud-based monitoring services.
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