Reduction of Short-term Process Variations -- Validation during paper machine rebuild

Purpose and goal:

The project aims for sustainable production through digitalization and thermal imaging, mitigating product/process variation. Before, no method to detect these fast variations existed.

The project will validate on an industrial scale the technical capabilities and especially how applicable it is to support the intended users. Intended users are engineers and operators, who must solve a wide spectrum of concrete problems in time. Expected results and effects:

The use of otherwise not available information will lead faster to a better and efficient production process being developed and thus a substantially more sustainable mill.

For paper and board mills the validation will lead to founded confidence in the system and it will support investment and organizational decisions towards advanced digitalization. For Termisk, a Swedish SME developing and marketing this system, it will lead to insight to where more R&D is required and confidence in investments.

Approach and implementation:

Validation will be performed via actively using the system at the mill, integrating it in the existing work routines, and a parallel evaluation. One focus will be on finding and selecting cases where the system can generate value. We will investigate what practical support the staff needs from advanced digitalization for their challenging task and adapt the system to their needs.