MarketIssues: Operational excellence – companies must quantify, track, and improve process variability daily at paper machine level

Manufacturers need to pursue innovative ways to decrease consumption and make their factories more efficient as energy and raw material prices soar. Report for TWM by Eduardo de Almeida, Managing Director, AFRY Zaragoza.

In a time where cost savings are more important than ever, there is one low hanging fruit that most manufacturers are still overlooking: process variability. In this article, we`ll identify the main sources of variability in paper tissue production, and more importantly – how to tackle them.

Soaring costs are pushing for efficiency

As prices of energy and raw materials soar, manufacturers pursue new ways to decrease consumption and make their factories more efficient. Higher costs mean that investments that were in the past dismissed due to long paybacks are now becoming attractive. Sustainability, and the push towards carbon-neutrality also puts pressure on companies to invest in green technology. Whilst companies should undoubtedly keep focus on green investments, there is a low-hanging fruit that often goes unnoticed: operational excellence.

Reaching stable basis weight is a struggle

In a recent article published in Tissue World Magazine in 2021 we discussed how manufacturing variability is common in the paper industry; companies are struggling to control base weight even within a single batch, and to meet minimum weight targets most were needing to compensate by increasing the average weight of their tissue rolls, therefore [giving away" a percentage of their product. This was shown by simply assessing basis weight variability of tissue rolls of the main manufacturers in Spain and Portugal. The results of that study showed that many companies – some of them large multinationals – were struggling to manufacture paper with stable basis weights.

The impact of this variability is massive. Manufacturing variability is indeed the tip of the iceberg, as lying beneath the surface one will find customer complaints, sheet breaks, excessive consumption of cellulose, water and energy, and more importantly, a culture that is not focused on operational excellence.