Summary: Bioproducts Incorporated, a manufacturer of feed ingredients for the livestock, poultry, and pet food industries, uses WinWedge at its Louisville, Kentucky plant to poll a Milltronics multi-tank ultrasonic level monitoring system and feed live tank levels directly into a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet — giving shift supervisors continuous, accurate inventory visibility around the clock.
The Challenge
The Louisville plant operates a tank farm of silos and liquid tanks holding raw materials and finished products, running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week across four shifts. Some tanks are large and remotely located, yet the shift supervisor is responsible for tracking every tank’s level for inventory and production reporting. Walking the tank farm to take readings — or transcribing them by hand — was slow, error-prone, and impractical on a round-the-clock schedule.
The Solution
The plant installed a Milltronics multi-tank ultrasonic level monitoring system and connected it to the serial port of the shift supervisor’s PC. WinWedge does the rest: at fifteen-second intervals it transmits an ASCII command to the Milltronics unit requesting current readings, receives the response, and feeds the parsed tank-level data over a DDE link into an Excel spreadsheet by activating an Excel macro which automatically slots the incoming data into the correct columns. This is automatically graphed so that the supervisor simply watches live levels update in the spreadsheet.
This is a two-way serial application: WinWedge doesn’t just listen — it actively polls the instrument on a timer (every 15 seconds here), a capability that distinguishes it from simple data loggers. The system proved valuable enough that Bioproducts purchased an additional WinWedge for its Las Vegas facility, and Instrumentation Supervisor Don Yates planned to extend monitoring across the company network using TCP-Wedge and TCP-Com so multiple remote locations could watch the same tank farm simultaneously.
The Results
- Continuous 24/7 tank level monitoring in a familiar Excel interface
- Automatic polling every 15 seconds — no manual readings, no transcription
- Complete data accuracy for inventory and production reporting
- A cost-effective solution the plant expanded to a second facility
How You’d Set This Up Today
The identical architecture runs on the current WinWedge under Windows 10/11. Modern level-monitoring systems often offer Ethernet output alongside RS232 — those connect through TCP-Wedge (included in WinWedge Pro) with no serial cable at all. And the network monitoring Bioproducts envisioned is now routine: TCP-Com makes a serial instrument’s data available across a network or the Internet, so plant levels can be watched from any authorized PC. Timed polling, parsing, and live Excel delivery all work exactly as described here.
Collecting Data from Your Own Instruments?
If you need live readings from tank level systems, flow meters, or any polled instrument in Excel, download a free fully-functional WinWedge trial or call (800) 722-6004 — support is free and unlimited, and we’ll help you configure the polling commands for your device.
About Bioproducts Inc.
For over seventy years, Bioproducts Incorporated has been a leading developer and manufacturer of solutions for livestock, poultry and pet food industries throughout the world. Specialty items include, QC Choline chloride, Bioflavors palatability, enhancers for pet foods, Ender Gill calcium salts of fatty acid, Bufferight sodium bicarbonate, and Nutrius specialty dairy products. Bioproducts Incorporated operates plants in California, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and Nevada.
The Louisville KY plant runs a tank farm consisting of a series of silos and liquid tanks that contain various raw materials and finished good products. Some of these tanks are large and remotely located. The plant runs 24hrs a day 7 days a week.
Bioproducts Incorporated is another satisfied user of TAL Technologies WinWedge software. The WinWedge software. The supervisor is responsible for watching the level of the tanks for inventory and production reporting purposes. This was done by installing a Milltronics multi-tank ultrasonic level monitoring system.
Shift supervisors at the plant have commented that they can not do their job efficiently without WinWedge to automate the tank level data collection into Excel.
Originally published in our application archives · Updated August 2026