Pulp Paper & Logistics


INDUSTRY NEWS 19 ANDRITZ


to the performance improvement is training and re-training all the operators. This training requires the commitment and cooperation of everyone involved – ANDRITZ OPE experts and mill personnel – to share a common goal and implement new ideas together.


Quarterly development review meetings make sure the key production indicators and the plan are progressing in correctly


Co-operation, partnership Unlike some types of maintenance outsourcing where work is sometimes performed without much interaction with mill operations personnel, critical to the success of the OPE service is collaboration and cooperation with mill people. “We have process and equipment expertise, but we cannot possibly know the details and nuances of the mill like the people who work there,” Kapanen says. That local and specific expertise is very important. Each of us brings something to the table.” This type of relationship is highly visible when noting the success of a process OPE service. For example, in a project currently under way for a pulp producer in South America, the process OPE service is being employed in the white liquor plant of three different mills within the company. The target of the service is to improve the performance of the white liquor plants, which are a bottleneck at each mill, without investing in capital. A significant contribution


Continuous measurement The main difference for a mill to understand when utilizing the OPE service is that it is not purchasing man hours, it is purchasing results. The measurement yardsticks – Key Performance Indicators (KPI) – are agreed to ahead of time. These KPI are measured continuously in order to track development. There is a mantra, “What gets measured, gets done,” and this applies very well to OPE. The target is to create a well-operating mill whose performance is improving all the time.


Example: The Äänekoski experience The first ANDRITZ OPE contract was with Metsä Fibre, beginning in 2004 in the white liquor plant at its Äänekoski mill. Cooking followed a year later. In 2007, the work was extended to the other fibreline processes of washing, screening, and oxygen delignification. “We chose the fibreline and


white liquor plant to focus OPE on because they have traditionally been our bottlenecks,” says mill manager Camilla Wikström. “ANDRITZ’s OPE work in the


white liquor plant helped us reduce kiln energy consumption and cut the amount of purchased lime,” Wikström says. “We have since performed small upgrades to our white liquor filters to improve throughput and white liquor quality. So there has been a pattern of continuous improvement.”


Process Overall Production Efficiency in action at a mill in South America


In the cooking area, there


were problems with digester performance in the winter time. ANDRITZ’s OPE team recommended solutions in two areas: small technical fixes for the digester and a different way of running it to improve its performance. Quite small things, but they made a big difference. Then in 2011 ANDRITZ upgraded


the digester with new screens and some other changes which improved the throughput and the in-digester washing. “We now get about 200 to 250


more tonnes per day through our fibreline,” Wikström says. “For the most part, this has been accomplished with small changes, not large capital investments.”


What the team at Äänekoski


looks for ANDRITZ to provide is its expertise in specific processes and equipment. “We expect them to come to us with new ideas and better ways of doing things,” Wikström says. Kalevi Kurki, ANDRITZ’s


customer service manager, adds, “It is important to be regularly present at the mill. We can run simulation models and tune control loops remotely, but without dialogue with the operators and managers, this has little value. Personal interaction is required.” More information from Jari


Kapanen, email: jari.kapanen@ andritz.com Web site: www. andritz.com


March/April 2015


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