A design-partner pilot
One line, one number, observe mode first.
Contact
Start with the line that is costing you the most.
The most useful first conversation is about one line, one product family and one measurable problem. Tell us which, and we will tell you what observe mode would need and what it would baseline.
Illustrative scenario: Plant run · one bread line, flour-lot change at the silo · shared oven. Not a measured run.
Contact
Tell us about your line
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Routes
- Design partners
- hello@doughex.com
- Partnerships
- hello@doughex.com
- Careers
- hello@doughex.com
- Security pack
- hello@doughex.com
One mailbox while the team is small. Named addresses follow as people join publicly.
What to include
- The line and the products it runs
- The systems on it: PLC and SCADA, checkweighers, sensing, QA, MES, cameras
- The number you would baseline
- Who would approve a pilot
Reasons
Why people get in touch
A partnership
OEMs, MES, sensing and vision suppliers who sell into bakeries.
The security pack
Design posture, data flows and roadmap dates.
A role
Perception, OT integration, simulation or bakery process.
Run timeline
What we would be deploying
Every Doughex run is an ordered, inspectable sequence. This is run_scn_01, an illustrative scenario: Plant run · one bread line, flour-lot change at the silo · shared oven. Scenario complete · every stage inside spec · one human approval at the oven.
run_scn_01
scenario · not measured
SUCCEEDED
-
01
order.receive
SUCCEEDED
0.8 s
Plant Orchestrator · Pulled the product spec, the recipe, the HACCP plan with its bake kill-step and metal-detection control points, the allergen status of the line and the new flour lot's certificate from MES and the lab system; locked the target envelope for the run.
-
02
twin.simulate
SUCCEEDED
38 s
Plant Orchestrator · Simulated 24 candidate profiles across mix, proof, deposit and oven on the Bakesim as-baked twin for the new flour lot; ranked them on colour and moisture margin, weight margin, energy per unit and takt, and discarded every candidate that thinned the bake kill-step margin.
-
03
mix.dose
SUCCEEDED
12 m 40 s
Dose-and-Mix · Adjusted hydration and mix energy for the new lot's absorption so dough temperature and development landed on target; dough state was handed to the proofer with its predicted rise curve.
-
04
proof.hold
SUCCEEDED
58 m
Ferment-and-Proof · Predicted the rise curve from inline height, temperature, humidity and CO2, then trimmed proofer humidity and dwell so rise and volume landed on target instead of running fast on the fresher lot.
-
05
deposit.trim
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Makeup-and-Deposit · Fused checkweigher readings with dough state and divider feedback and trimmed the divider in real time so portion weight sat at the minimum safe margin above the declared weight, with the underweight guardrail armed.
-
06
approve.human
APPROVAL
1 m 36 s
Plant Orchestrator · The twin's lowest-energy candidate wanted a zone-three temperature outside the site's bounded envelope. Held for the shift process engineer, who approved the step with a tighter colour alarm.
-
07
bake.zone
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Bake-and-Cool · Ran the oven against the twin's colour and moisture prediction; stepped zone temperatures and band speed toward the minimum-energy profile while predicted crust colour and crumb moisture stayed inside spec and the core-temperature kill step was verified on every reading.
-
08
inspect.line
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Defect-and-Inspect · 12 camera streams at oven exit, cooler exit and packing at the plant edge: colour, shape, holes, cracks, foreign-body and seal checks on every unit; two pale-top rejects were attributed to a draught at zone one and the oven agent was notified.
-
09
handle.pack
SUCCEEDED
continuous
Robot-and-Handling · Robotic depanning, tray transfers and packaging handling paced to the line, with rejected units diverted off the belt and the safe zone around each cell monitored.
-
10
release.genealogy
SUCCEEDED
1 m 05 s
Quality-and-Conformance · Lot released: flour lot, recipe, mix and proof setpoints, portion weights, oven profile, kill-step readings, inspection rejects and every human decision written to the genealogy and checked against spec and the HACCP plan.
First phase
What an engagement looks like
Gates, not dates. Each stage starts when the previous one has proven its number against your own baseline.
- Design partners. Three to five bakeries instrument the wedge workflow in observe mode. We measure the baseline on waste, giveaway and energy from your own checkweighers, meters and QA records.
- Recommend mode. The agent recommends mix, proof or oven moves and predicts bake, weight and foreign-body outcomes; your engineer approves. Accuracy and ROI are proven against the baseline.
- Graduated autonomy. Low-risk oven, depositing and inspection loops move to bounded automatic control with adaptive setpoints. Exceptions escalate to a person.
- Expansion. Adjacent modules are added within the same bakery, then across sites.
Pricing
Priced per line, per plant, per group
Land on one workflow with a measured baseline. Expand by line, module, site and autonomy level. Outcome components available on yield, waste, giveaway and energy.
Dough, proof or bake control, or inspection AI, for one line. For bakeries validating ROI on the wedge.
- One line, one agent module
- Plant-edge inference node
- Connectors to the line's PLC/SCADA, sensing and MES
- Review console, alerting, audit log and genealogy
- Observe and recommend levels, then bounded autonomy after the agreed gates
The whole bakery: dose and mix, ferment and proof, makeup and deposit, bake and cool, defect and inspect, quality and shelf life, yield and takt, robotic handling, and the Bakesim twin.
- All nine agents and the orchestrator
- Bakesim as-baked twin: the profile before the run
- Defect-to-cause feedback across the line
- Energy, changeover and takt optimisation
- Whole-plant lot genealogy
Bakery groups standardising on Doughex across sites, with custom recipe, product and tolerance models.
- Multi-site plant-edge fleet
- Custom recipe, product and tolerance models
- SLAs and dedicated support
- Outcome-based components on yield, waste, giveaway and energy
- On-prem or private-cloud deployment
A 15 to 20% discount for annual prepayment.
Enterprise agreements with usage ramps.
A share of measured yield, waste, giveaway or energy improvement on the highest-value workflows.
Per-batch, per-line or per-action metering above plan limits.
Enterprise
Standardise autonomy across the group
One policy model, one audit trail and one set of yield, waste, giveaway and energy benchmarks across every bakery in the group, with each site's recipes and tolerance models kept private to that site.
- Multi-site plant-edge fleet with shared model governance
- Custom recipe, product and tolerance models per site
- SSO and role-based access, named approvers (roadmap, 6 to 12 months)
- Model versioning, validation reports and rollback
- On-prem or private-cloud deployment
- SLAs and outcome-based components on the highest-value workflows
Guardrails
An agent that can move a setpoint needs a leash
Doughex writes to production equipment in a food plant. Every capability is scoped, every write is policy-checked, every output is cited, and every action is written to an append-only audit log the plant owns.
- Bounded action space. Each agent can only write to an explicit tag allow-list, inside per-tag rate and magnitude limits, at the autonomy level the plant has set.
- Critical control points are read, never written. The bake kill step, metal detection and X-ray rejects, allergen changeover and release decisions stay with the HACCP plan and the people who own it.
- Policy engine before every write. Autonomy level, interlock state, product, allergen status, shift and operator presence are evaluated before a setpoint moves.
- Grounded and cited. Every recommendation carries a citation to the recipe, spec or procedure it relied on. Retrieval is tenant-isolated and permission-aware.
- Immutable audit log. Append-only, exportable and retained on the plant's own storage, aligned to HACCP, FSMA, BRCGS and ISO 22000 record-keeping.
- Hard fallback. If the edge node, the network or a model stops, the line keeps running on its existing PLC and SCADA control and interlocks.
- Tenant and IP isolation. Recipes, customer specs and tolerance models never cross a customer boundary. On-prem deployment available.
Assurance posture
| Item | Scope | Status |
|---|---|---|
| SOC 2 Type I | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Roadmap, first 6 months |
| SOC 2 Type II | Cloud control plane | QUEUED Roadmap, 6 to 12 months |
| HACCP · FSMA · BRCGS · ISO 22000 · allergen | Grounding and record-keeping | RUNNING Design basis for retrieval and the audit log |
| Per-tenant isolation | Data, memory, models | RUNNING Design rule |
| On-prem deployment | Recipe-sensitive bakeries | RUNNING Design option |
Doughex supports your food-safety records. It is not a certification and it does not replace your HACCP plan.
From the plant floor
Who this is built for
The three people in an industrial bakery whose week changes when the line runs itself, and what each of them needs from Doughex.
Plant or Operations Director
Owns production rate, quality, waste, giveaway and yield, energy and food safety. Wants a bakery that holds spec at higher rate with fewer interventions, and a number that justifies the spend.
Bakery or Process Engineer
Owns recipes, dough development, proof and oven profiles, process windows and yield. Approves and corrects the agents in recommend mode; those corrections train the models.
Quality and Food-Safety Manager
Owns HACCP, FSMA, BRCGS, ISO 22000 and allergen conformance, foreign-body and defect conformance, and lot genealogy. Needs every action grounded, cited and written to an immutable record.
IT/OT and sustainability leads approve the deployment. There are no customer quotes on this site yet; design partners will speak for themselves when they choose to.
Integrations
It speaks plant, not cloud
Doughex reads and writes through the systems already on the floor. No parallel historian, no new HMI, no rip-and-replace. Connectors are built against each design partner's stack first; long-tail integrations are out of scope for the first release.
PLC and SCADA of mixers, proofers, dividers and depositors, ovens, coolers and slicers
Setpoint reads, guarded writes, interlocks untouched
Checkweighers, inline moisture and NIR, thermal cameras, dough height, temperature and humidity
Continuous product and process state
Metal detectors and X-ray systems
Read and verified; reject interlocks stay the plant's
Orders, recipes, product specs, lot genealogy, allergen status
Targets in, release records out
Multi-camera stations at oven exit, cooler exit, slicer and packaging
Frames, defect events, reject commands
Plant and oven-level gas and electricity meters
Hard constraints for the oven profile and schedule
Isaac-driven depanning, tray transfer and packaging cells
Perception and motion for pans, trays and packs
SSO and role-based access; SOC 2 on the roadmap
Named approvers, scoped roles
FAQ
Straight answers
The questions plant directors, process engineers and quality managers ask in the first meeting.
Only at the autonomy level your plant has set, and only to an explicit allow-list of low-risk loops inside explicit limits. Every design partner starts in observe mode, where Doughex predicts and writes nothing. Recommend mode follows, where a process engineer approves each move. Bounded autonomy on oven, depositing and inspection loops comes after the food-safety and ROI gates agreed up front.
Critical control points are not optimisation variables. The bake kill step, metal detection and X-ray reject interlocks, allergen changeover and release decisions stay with your HACCP plan and your people. Doughex verifies readings, writes them to an immutable audit log and attaches them to the lot genealogy. It supports HACCP, FSMA, BRCGS, ISO 22000 and allergen records; it is not a certification and does not replace your plan.
Doughex sits above your existing automation as a supervisory layer. If it stops, the line keeps running on its current PLC and SCADA control and the interlocks it already has. A Doughex outage degrades the bakery to the way it runs today, not to a stop.
The first phase is observe mode on one line: Doughex reads your sensors, PLC history, QA checks and MES while you run the line as usual, and we measure its predictions against your own checkweigher, colour and moisture checks. Recommendations start when accuracy is proven against that baseline, and improve as plant-specific history and engineer corrections accumulate.
Recipes, product specs, tolerance models and customer specs are tenant-scoped and never used to train another customer's models. Retrieval is multi-tenant isolated and permission-aware. On-prem deployment is available for bakeries protecting sensitive recipes or private-label specs.
You are, the same as with any control strategy. That is why every write is policy-checked, bounded, logged and reversible, every output carries a citation to the recipe or procedure it relied on, and anything above your threshold waits for a named approver. The audit log records the request, the reasoning, the limits applied and the human decision.
As a design partner, on one line, with one hard metric: giveaway in grams per unit, energy per unit through the oven, downgrade and waste from under- or over-bake, or foreign-body and defect escapes. We instrument the line in observe mode, measure the baseline, move to recommend mode when accuracy is proven, and expand only when the number holds.
Full multi-module autonomy across the whole bakery, long-tail integrations beyond the design partners' stacks, and self-serve onboarding. The first release is one wedge workflow, its connectors, the agent loop with human checkpoints, the review console and the food-safety audit log.
Get started
Or just send the line
A sentence about the line and the number is enough to start.