Automation of industrial activities aims to improve the efficiency of the productive processes while reducing costs and increasing safety. In industrial laundries, detergent management is a key factor that can lead to severe economic and environmental impacts if left uncontrolled. This paper documents the solution devised for an integrated detergent control and supervision system based on Internet-of Things paradigms. This solution follows from a problem put forward by the laundry services of Santa Casa da Misericórdia de Bragança, located in Portugal, to the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança. In order to keep track of the detergent in a centralised dispensing system, a Wi-Fi based measurement system was developed which enables real-time monitoring of the chemicals level. In order to facilitate the physical installation of the developed hardware, a custom-made enclosure was designed and 3D printed. The acquired data is then sent to a database connected to a data processing web-based platform which is responsible for the analytics.

Development of increasingly efficient production methods is a competiveness driving factor for any company. Today, many of these improvements include the integration of technology-based solutions into processes traditionally operated by humans. In this context, the present work aims to report the controller performance of a prototype developed for semi-automatic sewing stations. This project was fostered by “Factory Play”, a Portuguese company that produces inflatable structures, under the technical supervision of the Polytechnic Institute of Bragança. At the present time, the sewing station travel speed is regulated by an embedded PID controller that has been previously tuned using classical methods. However, even if the overall performance is currently acceptable, additional experiments were made regarding the use of evolutionary based algorithms to attain a better dynamic response and flexibility. This article present the results obtained using those methods where it is possible to confirm that the use of evolutionary algorithm will simplify the design process while consistently leading to a suitable solution.