A Reliability-Based Approach To Large Outages, 2016 Pulping, Engineering, Environmental, Recycling, Sustainability (PEERS) Conference Proceedings

Wausau Paper, an SCA company, is a producer of "away-from-home" towel and tissue products with two paper machines and a deink facility. Several years ago we undertook a mill-wide reliability improvement effort. We targeted numerous reliability needs, but strategically focused on four key areas: Leadership & Organization, Planning & Scheduling, Preventive Maintenance & Condition Monitoring, and Spare Parts Management. Approximately 18 months into the process we made the decision to manage a large upcoming outage as an extension of our reliability process. We used the knowledge we gained to successfully plan and execute a 7-day outage which included significant capital improvements in addition to repairs and maintenance. In preparing for the outage we developed a number of new "tools" to manage such aspects of the outage as safety, cost management, materials expediting, resource plans, timeline development, meeting structure & guidelines, and many others. The outage was executed injury-free, on time, under budget, and we came up quickly afterwards and ran well. By any definition the outage was a success. A few months afterwards we applied our knowledge and tools to a Yankee grind on our tissue machine. This was a four-day event which included significant maintenance costs and was successful by all the same criteria as the earlier event. A few months later we put our system to a test a third time on a cold mill outage. This was a two-day event which again included significant maintenance costs and was again successful for the same reasons. In summary, we successfully planned and executed three large outages in a one-year time period, and each time we improved the "tools" we developed.

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