Where to Place Monitoring Sensors for Improving Complex Manufacturing Systems? Discussing a Real Case in the Food Industry

Industry 4.0 technologies offer manufacturing companies numerous tools to enhance their core processes, including monitoring and control. To optimize efficiency, it is crucial to effectively install monitoring sensors. This paper proposes a Multi-Criteria Decision-Making (MCDM) approach as a practical solution to the sensor placement problem in the food industry, having been applied to wine bottling line equipment at a real Italian winery. The approach helps decision-makers when discriminating within a set of alternatives based on multiple criteria. By evaluating the interconnections within the different equipment, the ideal locations of sensors are suggested, with the goal of improving the process’s performance. The results indicated that the system of electric pumps, corker, conveyor, and capper had the most influence on the other equipment which are then recommended for sensor control. Monitoring this equipment will result in the early discovery of failures, potentially also involving other dependant equipment, contributing to enhance the level of performance for the whole bottling line.