Many years ago now, as technology began to ramp up in the manufacturing world, process leaders began to focus on removing variabilities. The thought was, in operations, “If we can reduce variabilities in our processes, then our finished product becomes much more consistent.”

Mayr-Melnhof Karton in Kolicevo, Slovenia produces premium recycled and virgin fiber-based cartonboard grades on two board machines with grammages between 200 and 500g/m². Key markets are food, cosmetics, and pharmaceutical packaging, as well as other demanding applications.

If you type “alarm management” in a search engine, you will get hundreds of results including articles, papers, presentations and guides.

In my last blog post entitled ”Operational Readiness and Commissioning Plans: the Key to a Successful Start”, we looked at how BBA gets started with creating an operational readiness and commissioning plan that includes the following seven steps:

The pace of product development is ever accelerating, fueled by factors such as the rapid development of Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Very definitely. Liquid ring vacuum pump manufacturers publish capacity curves (CFM and vacuum level) assuming that the seal water is at a fixed temperature (typically 60°F).

The project’s goal was to reduce steam consumption in deaerators by using heat from the digesters (otherwise wasted) to heat demineralised water that was then used in the mill processes.

The MBN pumps are ideal for use in medium-pressure applications. They have a big variety of nozzle position options, thus providing flexibility during installation and simplifying the piping design.

Industrial electric motors are the “life blood” of your plant’s operation. The theoretical design life of an electric motor is 20 years or more. Yet many tens of thousands of industrial electric motors end up in the trash pile prematurely. This results in an enormous loss for industries across the board.

It depends. The drive load increases exponentially as the dryer speed increases, until the condensate goes into a rimming condition. 

A pulp mill was having issues with its pulp drying machine evacuating condensate and the rotary joints and piping were leaking.

The production of paper and fabrics includes the handling of rolls and reels at the end of the production process. These rolls must be moved from the forming or primary processing machines to other machines for further processing, or they must simply be stored correctly. Automatic guided vehicles (AGVs) are often used to automate the movement of these reels.

A damaged headbox apron lip is a common sight on a papermachine and a frequent cause of paper production quality problems.

It depends. If the dryer is running at a high speed (say, 3500 fpm) and the condensate is rimming, there may be no noticeable change in dryer drive power. 

Many papermakers look at the life of the closing or the cost of the clothing per ton. Long clothing life and low clothing costs are good, but, on their own, neither of these are good metrics for clothing performance.

Recently I met a young and enthusiastic engineer who declared that “ We are already done with the reliability and maintenance management strategy, it is well developed and documented by a group in our company” “That sounds good “ I replied, “That means that you are done with about 5% of the work”.

A bubble tube system is a simple, accurate, reliable and a low cost method of measuring liquid level in an open or a vented tank.

The LJX rotary joint and rigid syphon system is designed for critical preheater and preconditioner rolls used in corrugated packaging manufacturing.

In best practices, a closeout review or critique meeting gathers all the information from the last event and uses it to prepare for the next event.

When I am asked to tell the benefits of the Kytola oil lubrication system, I always start with a question: “Have you had a bearing failure within a year?”

How to minimize costly downtime in a complex mill or plant environment? I bet that every mill has faced this question every once in a while.