Orora´s Botany Mill modernized their paper making process few years ago in Australia. Three 1960`s vintage paper machines were replaced by the B9 paper machine, the most sophisticated machine of its type in the southern hemisphere. The mass of information from the new production line was huge so Orora got process data analytics tool Wedge to keep them up the path of development.
“When the B9 machine came to life, it soon became apparent that there was significantly more information available to manage and optimize the process than the older machines. This information came from many different systems and the only way to do this effectively was to drop the information into Microsoft Excel and manipulate it from there. Essentially it was very inefficient and consumed significant resources,” tells Paul Chappell, Technical Manager of Botany Mill.
The flexibility of Wedge convinced Orora
The original installation involved obtaining information from the Metso DNA system, Quality Recording Module and production recording system. In addition, Orora opted for the Wedge profile edition which allows profile information to be monitored from the paper machine scanners.
“Wedge was chosen due to its flexibility and ability to assist in troubleshooting complex process problems.”
“Several systems were considered however Wedge was chosen due to its flexibility and ability to assist in troubleshooting complex process problems and ultimately improve and optimize production and quality issues.” Chappell adds.
Quality in control
Today the Wedge system at Orora Botany Mills contains over 24,000 tags across multiple systems. Wedge is used for general problem solving and monitoring by primarily operators and middle management at this stage.
“The key to getting full value from the system is having a site champion whose function is to develop the system in conjunction with process specialists, operators and management.”
He adds that on site, Wedge has been incredibly useful in allowing them to set standards for how to best run process and notify if any key parameters are not meeting their standards. They have also seen benefits in its ability to optimize process additives, troubleshooting production problems, energy monitoring, day to day monitoring in each area and better quality control.
Guidance at site
Chappel says they have received good technical support regarding updates and troubleshooting from the Wedge technical support team from Trimble.
“We have been fortunate to have had Trimble’s product manager Mika Suojärvi as our Wedge support who has been able to assist and provide guidance on Wedge system development on our site.”
Orora will be expand the use of Wedge in the future to improve process monitoring, quality control and optimization.”
He thinks the biggest opportunity on site is to further develop the Wedge skills of workers in using it to quickly analyze issues in the production process.
“Increasing daily usage to increase familiarity with Wedge is the only way to be able to achieve this goal. We also are looking at adding more of our mill’s systems into Wedge. We have also ncorporated other process systems such as our Metso process and quality vision system for example sheet defects and break cameras into Wedge to allow tracing of defects and quicker diagnosis of paper breaks.” Chappell adds.
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