With its digitalization and automation portfolio Papermaking 4.0, Voith Paper is an international pioneer and innovation driver in paper production. The technology company now has more than 300 digital installations worldwide. The numerous references prove how digitalization continuously optimizes the production process in terms of efficiency, sustainability and quality.
“For more than five years, customers worldwide have been relying on our digital solutions. The areas of application are very different – with our individual industrial application, we offer customized solution packages,” says Dr. Jürgen Abraham, president products and services and digital business officer at Voith Paper. “Based on our expertise in digitalization, automation and artificial intelligence, we are continuously developing new possibilities for the paper production of the future.”
With concrete approaches, Voith experts and the OnPerformance.Lab advise, accompany and support customers on their way to a digitalized paper mill. The IIoT platform OnCumulus, which provides fast and reliable access to data from machines and systems, serves as the basis. Using the collected and evaluated data, the applications lead to performance improvements along the entire process chain. The robust digital solutions feature the highest security standards, are implemented in the shortest possible time and show continuous production improvements from day one. In addition to long-term efficiency gains, Papermaking 4.0 solutions enable significantly more sustainable production.
“Digitalization is an important lever to support the improvement of all performance areas of the operation – customer service, efficiency and flexibility,” says Mario Naldini, chief operating officer BU Paper and Security at Fedrigoni. “The onefficiency solution implemented in Fabriano by Voith represents a fundamental milestone in our digital transformation. With a payback period of less than one year, the economic benefits are significant.”
“With the help of Voith’s leading technologies, we can improve the sustainability of our production,” says Dr. Thomas Welt, chief executive officer at Laakirchen Papier AG. “In addition to the diverse references, Voith’s decades of expertise in sustainable papermaking and extensive research and development activities convinced us. Innovations from the Papermaking 4.0 portfolio, including onefficiency.strength, are already being used successfully at our PM 10. In addition, we are a pilot customer for the new onefficiency.breakprotect and onview.energy solutions.”
Voith’s bundled know-how and specially-focused innovation on the paper industry are unique in the market. For each initial situation, Voith offers paper manufacturers customized complete solutions consisting of digitalization, automation and expert knowledge. In line with the full-liner approach, Voith develops specific sensor technology, for example, and supports implementation throughout the entire process for the best result.
Grupo Gondi also implemented MCS, DCS and QCS automation solutions as well as Voith’s oncare.health and oncare.asset digital condition monitoring and maintenance solutions on PM 7 at the Papel y Empaques mill. “Through intensive team work, coaching and training, all team members in Monterrey were quickly trained and up to speed,” says Francisco Javier Lozano Hernandez, maintenance planning manager at Grupo Gondi. “Oncare.health now monitors the current condition of the plant at all times, registers even the smallest anomalies, sends warning signals to the operators and independently develops optimization options. Combined with the intelligent maintenance management oncare.asset, the solutions will increase and sustain a world class machine availability.”
In order to continue to provide impetus in the digitalization and automation environment, Voith Paper relies on agile, customer-centric development processes. One result of this approach is onview.digitaleye, which won this year’s AI Champions Award. With the help of the digital analysis tool, recovered paper quality can be precisely determined for the first time even before stock preparation.
“New innovative solutions like onview.digitaleye are important components of Papermaking 4.0 and autonomous paper production,” explains Dr Jürgen Abraham. “In the future, digitalization and automation will grow ever closer together. We also recently presented an innovative operating concept as part of our Papermaking Vision. With the help of intelligent algorithms and an intuitive design, this will ensure maximized user-friendliness, production capacity and efficiency in the future.”
With the campaign “PAPER IS ON”, Voith will be highlighting the focus topics of the digital product portfolio Papermaking 4.0 in the near future – full-line supplier, efficiency, sustainability, cloud solutions, automation and innovation.
