Monitoring of Fibrous Raw Materials, 1994 Process & Product Quality Conference Proceedings

G. Youd <>

BS5750, the forerunner of ISO9000, was introduced in Britain in 1979. It was soon recognized within WIGGINS TEAPE (later to become ARJO WIGGINS APPLETON) that eventually Group Mills would need to register their Quality Systems.

Anticipating these needs and seeking to further its efforts in the management of supplies, the company developed a scheme to monitor the quality of fibrous raw materials. This paper describes how this takes advantage of suppliers’ own data to generate indices of pulp quality which permit direct comparison between sources and grades of pulp, and between different test protocols.

With several years’ data from many mills, “PULP INDEX” is now a computerized scheme with effective graphics to disclose any trends and changes that occur and measures the variability of suppliers. Used with the evidence of performance in the paper mills, this system also provides a quantitative method of determining the sensitivity of our paper machines to selected pulp properties.