14 ABB
maintenance plan. Instead of wasting time on routine maintenance that is not critical, mills can better serve the needs of operations by focusing maintenance where it matters most.
Increased productivity and reduced risks A recent example of where remote collaboration has delivered tangible benefits can be seen at the Gävle mill belonging to leading Swedish packaging materials producer, BillerudKorsnäs, one of dozens of pulp and paper mills connected to ABB using Collaborative Operations. For the Gavle mill, its status as an ABB Collaborative Operations customer means that specific, in-depth expertise with its installed ABB control systems is not needed. For example, when an alarm is triggered due to abnormal values, the mill’s operators are
able to rely upon ABB’s experts to interpret the issue, provide detailed analysis and send fully qualified service technicians to check the causes of the alarm on site – preventing disruption and production losses. “We do not have the very specific expertise of the control systems. The Collaborative Operations Center catches up with issues early and gives us access to ABB’s expertise. In this way, we prevent disruptions and production losses,” says Andreas Eriksson, service engineer at BillerudKorsnäs. In another recent example, ABB helped a North American packaging supplier that had previously been hesitant to embrace remote collaboration capabilities to keep their production running through remote control loop tuning. The company – a critical supplier of packaging materials to a large
metropolitan area – encountered a situation with weight variation during the coronavirus lockdown. They had limited expertise on site due to social distancing and needed support understanding why they were experiencing 2-Sigma CD weight variances with higher grades, which was causing their paper machine to slow down. Remote diagnostics were used to
reach a solution and ABB’s experts found a mapping error in the CD weight profile. Operations were quickly normalised, with improved CD control and the paper machine on its way back to normal speed, all under remote supervision by ABB. The customer was so impressed with the speed and diagnostic capabilities available by using remote connectivity that a proposal for ongoing remote support is now in progress. The changing mindset
towards regarding collaborative operations more of a necessity
Pulp Paper & Logistics
than a nice to have underscores the importance of ongoing development to continue to find new and innovative ways to help our customers. That’s why our ABB Collaborative Operations team members also work closely with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) lab within the ABB Corporate Research function to further develop AI and machine learning applications, finding ways to help customers with even more optimisation opportunities.
Taking the first step So, with these benefits in mind, how should mills go about taking the first steps into this developing area? I recommend that any mill considering collaborative operations solutions needs to first identify and select a well- established partner that has the high level of process expertise, plus automation, technology and domain know-how, required
Mills taking even the most modest, first step to a collaborative approach quickly come to understand the benefits July/August 2020
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