Benefits of benchmarking your pulp and paper mill performance

We’re passionate about moving our customers' performance forward, which is why we initiated the Valmet Production Survey more than twenty years ago. Since the beginning of the study, we’ve collected thousands of responses from diverse paper and board machines worldwide. Today, the survey is covering the pulp segment as well with a focus on cooking, fiberline, recovery boiler and lime kiln. The survey focuses on production, energy and environmental impact. 

If you still haven’t bought into benchmarking your mills performance, here are three reasons to consider: 

Understand your performance in comparison to competitors

Having a thorough understanding of your own machine or equipment performance can only get you so far. If you aim to improve your energy efficiency or overall equipment or machine efficiency, it helps to understand current industry averages to identify areas for improvement and their priority for attention. By gaining an independent perspective, you can establish realistic targets based on industry information. 

With data benchmarking, we can map variabilities and see how they impact on the production goals. We can then choose the right approach to define optimizations and investments that match these targets,” says Toni Mäcklin, Valmet’s Global Sales Manager for Service Agreements.

Open minds to new opportunities

While the results can be uncomfortable to read, benchmarking helps place organizational focus on change and provides the direction for the change process. It helps you clearly identify specific areas of opportunity for discussion based on data rather than assumptions or emotions. It can minimize any resistance to change, by creating an evidence-based direction to support your initiative. 

Benchmarking helps you identify not only  good performance, but also how to be a market leader

Market leaders are the ones that exceed industry benchmarks. Whether you’re comparing productivity, machine speed, any efficiency factor or energy efficiency, benchmarking can provide a better outlook as to where you are versus where you want to be. Where one or two percentage points can have a dramatic impact, intelligence may warrant an investment or reallocation of resources. The challenge is that successful companies are no doubt working to widen the gap. 

The point is to learn from the best practices of others and integrate those into your company’s operational framework, thereby driving continuous development and maintaining relevance in a rapidly changing business environment,“ says Robin Ivarsson, Valmet’s Reliability and Performance Engineer for Service Agreements.

Are you ready to learn more about your performance? 

If you’re interested in learning more about the performance of the equipment and machines within the industry, you can participate in the Valmet Production Survey and benefit from the results and the benchmarking data it provides. 

The next data collection period will start at the beginning of 2025. Please contact us if you would like to participate.  

By providing your equipment and machine performance data you gain access to the widest production and energy efficiency data available.