With over 20 installations around the globe, the OnEfficiency.Strength concept from Voith is setting new standards in data-driven papermaking. A recent installation at DS Smith Witzenhausen shows how the use of OnEfficiency.Strength can achieve impressive results in quality stabilization.
The digital solution’s key impacts include savings in raw materials such as fibers and starch, as well as reductions in paper machine energy use. Using real-time data from virtual sensors to predict strength, the system controls actuators such as the jet/wire ratio, refiner, starch application and different fiber types according to the highest cost efficiency to produce the relevant paper grade in the desired specification.
As part of an optimization project at the Witzenhausen site, where 430,000 tons of corrugated base paper with a basis weight between 115 and 210 gsm are produced annually, the module initially achieved savings in raw materials on the PM 1.
“In the further course, we defined a new focus on quality stabilization and reduction of overprocessing,” reports Daniel Goetze, production manager PM 1 at DS Smith in Witzenhausen. “It was impressive to see how flexibly and quickly the system responded. Process changes that operators previously made empirically across multiple tambours are now performed quickly and effectively in a single tambour with OnEfficiency.Strength.”
Thanks to the innovative OnEfficiency.Strength module, real-time control of paper quality is now possible. Using flexibly adjustable parameters, system goals such as raw material savings, strength reduction, quality stabilization or a balanced compromise between these goals can be freely weighted.
“The monitoring shows us that deviations from the mean value are decreasing. This means that fluctuations in strength have been significantly reduced and the paper machine is running even more stably,” explains Nils Schmidt, production supervisor at DS Smith Witzenhausen. “In addition, this value is now much closer to the specification, which has a direct impact on cost savings,” says Schmidt.
OnEfficiency.Strength is available as a standalone solution and will be part of Voith’s smart MillOne ecosystem. MillOne aggregates and analyzes all data in one central production center, providing an unprecedented level of integration and consistency in data usage to enhance human expertise and streamline production processes. Thanks to real-time data analytics, predictive maintenance and smarter decision-making, it can make mills more productive, reduce costs and increase profitability.
