A large paper products manufacturer with distribution to more than 175 countries, came to Braincube with the hopes of reducing their steam consumption. Energy consumption consisted of 15-20% of the total paper production cost, so optimizing their process would reduce overall cost, increase their efficiency and reduce their water use.
With more than 200 process parameters used to make this paper product, it’s a complex process to understand and to optimize. In addition, former analyses showed no correlations between steam consumption and process parameters.
Braincube worked with this company to create a digital twin of their entire production process from two years of historically collected data. They calculated the lag time, aggregated and contextualized the data to provide a perfect data set to use for analysis.
[Braincube] is a very good process diagnostics feature that allows you to correlate variables for process improvement or even troubleshooting.
Braincube Customer
Using Braincube’s proprietary Cross-Rank Analysis app, they were able to isolate critical parameters to evaporate more tons of water, using less energy. The Cross-Rank was able to prescribe the exact settings needed to operate at prime efficiency.
This information was then pushed to the control room with live instructions to help operators stay within maximum compliance. They saw a substantial increase in their saved energy as well as an increased compliance.
Key Results:
- +8% energy saved
- 90% full compliance with optimized settings
- -5.3 tons of water evaporated instead of 4.9, with the same level of energy consumption
- Variability reduction divided by 4
- Two years after implementation, results are still sustainable
- Company reached set KPIs and has continued to improve with Braincube
Given this company’s focusing on sustainability, it was beneficial to not only achieve less waste, but further to continue to refine and optimize their production lines to achieve better results.
Because Braincube’s advanced analytics were able to pinpoint the exact combination of settings to optimize their end-to-end manufacturing process, they have seen gains that are still sustainable more than two years after starting with Braincube.
*Exact details have been excluded due to proprietary information.
