Towards Process Excellence: Advanced Optimization of Grade Change Operations in Paper, TAPPICon26

Global market conditions are pressuring paper manufacturers to improve profitability by delivering consistent product quality whilst optimizing production costs. Performance improvements during grade change operations offers a major opportunity in this regard: reducing transition times without compromising quality can prevent significant production losses caused by off-spec paper or, in worst cases, downtime from sheet breaks.

Most mills employ automated grade-change functions within their quality control systems. These typically use model-based control to manage the transition, but many existing solutions are either too complex to configure and maintain or too rigid or simplistic to meet diverse operational needs.

This paper presents a new automatic grade-change solution that combines model predictive control with advanced optimization methods in a way that is both powerful and user-friendly. The solution is intuitive to configure, simple to maintain, and flexible enough to adapt to different production goals. Examples illustrate how it handles complex transitions, coordinates wet-end and dry-end processes, and integrates economic optimization to maintain product quality while minimizing costs. The paper also highlights how this approach can be tailored to different machines and production strategies, providing mills with a solution to systematically improve profitability, advance toward more autonomous operations and truly achieve process excellence.

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