Production monitoring ideas

I've got a machining center I'm thinking of retrofitting with linuxcnc and I'm trying to understand the value from a production and automation standpoint.  Looking at the feedback we get from the drives with ethercat has me wondering, would it be possible to record the spindle load for a production job? Could linuxcnc compare the recorded values through the duration of the job and error out if the real time job sees an out of tolerance load? This could be a real time way to monitor broken tools or maybe even worn out tools before they break. 
Maybe this could be done with the axis servos as well. 

What other ideas are there for linuxcnc to help with production automation?

Could it, yes! Does it now? not sure....prob not

linuxcnc being open source gives so many opportunities for advancement and tuning that cannot be done with closed sourced machines.

Your idea is a great one, no reason its not possible, someone just needs to code it. With AI now adays it couldnt be a better time.

id start with a simple python script to record the values every 10th of a second or so (outside of linuxcnc) then tell linuxcnc to stop if those compared values are different (+ some perfentage). once it is working the integration to linux cnc wont be too bad.