(PRWEB) August 2, 2006 -- Many lean manufacturing initiatives dictate the need to eliminate unacceptable raw materials at the beginning of the process, before the contaminated items are carried further down the process line. This is a forward-thinking solution that all Paper Mills should incorporate. And why not? It saves money in the long-run.
Situation:
A Texas paper mill had to shutdown a machine because the latex they received was off spec, and the mill did not filter it out of the rail car upon receipt.
Many mills rely on raw material suppliers to maintain high QC standards to ensure the components they receive are of acceptable quality. Often times, however, the materials are within acceptable quality guidelines when they leave the producer’s plant but are contaminated in the tanker truck, rail car, or product tote en route to the mill.
The end result is the mill takes the product in -- does not filter it at the time of arrival -- and simply puts it into a storage tank. When the component gets mixed to make the final product and the final product has debris in it, the mill has to try to determine which of the half dozen components the debris came in.
These products will include, but not be limited to: latex, wet end starch, defoamers, dyes, alum, clays, PCC and GCC.
Ronningen-Petter Solution:
A simple solution is to install a filter (DCF 800 /1600 self cleaning filters, bag filter, and etcetera) as the product is off-loaded.
This keeps the debris outside of the mill. This also becomes an effective QC tool for the mill. When the tanker truck or rail car finishes unloading, all they have to do is look at the filter media to determine how much debris was taken out of the product.
If the debris type and size is unacceptable, the mill needs to contact the component supplier for resolution. In addition, it may behoove the Paper Mill to mandate that their component supplier filter their load-out line before shipping the items to the Paper Mill.
Results:
Ronningen-Petter was able to provide a DCF-1600 for this application, and the latex issue did not appear again.
Assuming $25,000 per hour of machine shutdown, this was a tremendous ROI for the Paper Mill.
by Ask Filter Man
If you would like to discuss this filtration solution with one of our highly trained Applications Specialists, please Contact Us at
http://www.rpaprocess.com/ContactUs/Contact-Us-Paper-Mill.asp.
