Presentation: Leveraging Real Time Data to Significantly Reduce In-Line Quality Issues

Evergreen Packaging, Inc. is faced with the same challenge as all organizations; to keep costs low and returns high. In-line quality in a 24/7 process can significantly increase cost if not controlled quickly. An intermittent issue during the final steps of coated paperboard making had been nagging Evergreen for some time. With many potential variation causes, analysis of the process data was needed to determine root causes. The different tools available to Evergreen through their Enterprise Agreement with OSIsoft were leveraged to tackle the problem. PI ProcessBook displays were created to make process set points visual, allowing for process monitoring while the quality issues were occurring. This quickly made it clear that machine set points and recipes did not always correspond resulting in significant variation in the process. Evergreen was able to trend these variations within PI DataLink, to identify changes in the process that helped to reduce quality issues in the final stage by half.