In the impossibly complex technical and economic
equation that is a modern pulp mill, finding the point
where a mill’s equipment, raw material supplies, and
customer requirements come together to produce the
right product for the right price at the right time is a major
challenge; a challenge that can turn the hair of a mill
manager prematurely grey.
USA industry consultant Bill Jordan calls finding that
optimum balance point hitting the ‘sweet spot’ of a mill.
A past plant manager of both Champion International and
International Paper mills in Alabama and Minnesota, Jordan,
now based in Decatur, Alabama, says that every mill has its
sweet spot, and it varies not only from mill to mill but within
a given mill over time, sometimes day to day.
With years of hands-on experience of making mills work,
Jordan is used to chasing his sweet spot. To find it, he says,
mill managers need to break out of the ‘volume focus’ and
understand the whole process.
The biggest challenge, according to Jordan, has always
been “knowing what was going on.” He has used everything
— from matrix analysis to the classic Monday morning
meeting — to find the source of the problems that beset a
pulp mill.
The difficulty has always been the time it takes for
information to ‘trickle down’ through the system, particularly
when something is out of balance and the root cause itself is
a constantly changing factor such as chip quality.
“It can take weeks, even months of Monday meetings to
find out that you have a problem that the guy out at the
chipper caused without having a clue what he was doing to
the digesters,” says Jordan.
Finding and hitting that balance — a dynamic, constantly
changing target — is the nearly impossible job of the mill
manager. To effectively manage Jordan’s elusive ‘sweet spot,’
mill managers must know what’s going on — quickly. | |
Jordan recently assessed a new technology, The Virtual
Chip Doctor (TVCD), that holds the promise of turning the
management of the chip quality issue from the current largely
ad-hoc processes into a precise science (See sidebar Up Close:
The Virtual Chip Doctor).
Although the TVCD system has not yet been used in an
Australian mill, Joel Young, a Canadian now working as
chief chemist and technical manager at Visy Pulp & Paper’s
PM#9 mill at Tumut, NSW, says chip quality problems here
are similar, and the USA experience, where TVCD is being
successfully utilised in a number of US and Canadian mills,
provides a fair measure of how effective the system might
be in this country.
A joint venture between New Hampshire-based Biomass
Resources Inc and Fiber-M Technologies, of Bangor, Maine,
The Virtual Chip Doctor’s approach to solving the chip quality
problem is not an entirely new paradigm. Many pulp and
paper companies have developed similar tracking techniques
and analytical software in-house, at considerable expense.
Joel Young observes that, “These systems, while potentially
quite powerful, often ebb and flow in their use and utility
owing to lack of standardisation in testing and data handling
or operating platform. User familiarity and simplicity in data
presentation also often compromise the utility of such inhouse
programs.
“TVCD brings together the knowledge base and experience
of Greg True of Biomass Resources with up-to-date webenabled
software and data management. Combining the
knowledge and experience of The Chip Doctor, with the
user friendly attributes of TVCD provides state of the art in
quality fibre processing.”
Where TVCD differs from existing models is by offering a
‘standardised’ internet-based system that can be installed and
up and running, in any mill, in a matter of weeks. Essentially,
what the developers are offering might be seen as the rough |
CHIP MACS/TVCD Solution
