Annual planning cuts downtime at Canadian pulp mill

Location

Customer challenge

• Planning is critical to the success of an annual outage.
• Time and on-site resources required for proper planning are often limited.
• To minimize downtime and achieve the goals of the shutdown, mill personnel needed outage planning support that demonstrated:
  • Full understanding of mill-specific equipment needs
  • Expert process knowledge of pulp washing and Fiberline operations
  • Available resources to execute maintenance and troubleshooting

Solution

• Began with process audit of vacuum washing system.
• Audit uncovered the need for
  shower bar replacement.
• Replacement project created opportunity for mill-specific training on vacuum washing process and legacy equipment GL&V and IMPCO equipment.
• Utilizing the expertise of Valmet's vacuum washer expertise, mill began preparing for its next outage with pre-planned spare parts program that included the use of customized washer parts boxes delivered to the mill.
• Subsequent projects were  planned and excuted, including trunnion replacements and  additional wash shower replacements.

Results

• Removed bottleneck from the fibreline
• Continue to keep downtime in the mill at a minimum
• Peace of mind for mill personnel that they prepared for their upcoming outages
• Reinforced trust in and understanding of OEM partner