Adj. Prof. Dr. Nenad Milosavljevic, eMBA
Managing Director
Sunnea Oy Consulting & Engineering company offers a new model of “Working together” with the customer to solve machine problems and develop their own products and processes. Sunnea offers so-called internal “tailor-made cooperation” also for special customer needs.
The proximity of customers makes Sunnea’s employees aware of the challenges and needs of customers. In frequent contact with our customer, “Work together” we are also support them and grow together with them.
Sunnea’s goal is to improve customer efficiency processes and support customers through long-term collaboration. Without innovation a company will not be able to follow the rapid demands of the market and may be disrupted by small and start-up companies.
An example of Sunnea good practice, DS Smith Belisce, PM3
A request for a feasibility study came from DS Smith (PM3) due to runnability performance problems mainly in the slalom group. Runnability problems were manifested by flattering of the paper, especially during tail mode. The tail is “hanging” after the press-section and is very unstable. It takes time and effort to transfer the paper over the first bottom roll and put the tail into the machine. It takes a long time to transfer the paper through the drying section. The paper was not completely controlled by the runnability boxes and wrinkles appear.
To solve the problems, we sit together with management and discussed the issues in detail. The customer explained where the bottlenecks are during paper production. The discussion resulted in setting a clear action plan.
We determined a person from the customer’s machine crew and educated him about his tasks during the measurement. Therefore, he became an active participant in our measurement team. We chose a shift-leader with experience who participated in measurement and was our guide for determining all the necessary measuring points from layout.
The audit included a slalom group measurement where a web-breaks problem typically occurred. The measurement plan included measuring the flow of supply air and exhaust air, the thermodynamic state of the air around the runnability boxes, the state of the fan, the flows, the pressure drops. All these measurements are carried out to get a clear picture of the actual situation in the slalom group and the performance of the runnability devices in the slalom group.
The purpose of the audit was not only to measure, but also to transfer knowledge and active participation of machine crew how to deal with the situation when they have problems with paper breaks and tail threading. We suggest the customer to buy some of the measuring devices that will help them to obtain basic information about the system. By knowing certain process parameters, they will be able to understand the rough situation on the machine and obtain help from us even if we are not on the site. Some emergencies can also be resolved by phone call if we know the basic actual data.
The measurements went very well despite the high humidity and heat (sauna condition). The critical points that would require machine shutdown were found (This was resolved in a planned machine shutdown). Some points we were able to resolve by balancing the supply air and exhaust air flows. Runnability devices were measured, and vacuum levels were adjusted, and recommendations were given for future machine shutdowns.
One of the conclusions of our investigation is to have more common service performance. Maintenance of the most important components of the air and drying system and the runnability components is necessary to achieve high system performance and to avoid unplanned shutdown of the PM. Once again, we must emphasize a good understanding of the problematic from the customer side and our side, and willing to work and cooperate in solving possible problems at PM.
Still, there is a lot of work to be done to bring the machine to optimal condition. After implementing the recommended changes, we will check the condition of the machine again. The drying section of PM as the largest energy consumer in the paper machine provides the opportunity for very large savings through optimization of the drying process and waste energy savings with new modern heat exchanger systems and the application of new approaches to complete closure of waste heat from the machine. Zero waste heat from paper machines is our new goal. Therefore, this is not the end of the project, it continues…
