Ruchira Papers manufactures printing, writing, and kraft paper from agricultural waste materials at its mill in Himachal Pradesh, around 200 km north of New Delhi, India.
By 2021 the company was facing increasing downtime and production loss due to the lack of a solid drive maintenance strategy. Local non-ABB service suppliers were servicing failing drives, but the customer was looking for better ways to improve the reliability of their drive-controlled applications as they were experiencing around 4-5 unplanned downtimes per year. Considering that in the paper manufacturing industry, the average cost of unplanned downtime on a single paper machine can reach $20,000 per minute, the application's uptime and quick response when something is not working properly, is critical.
Looking to improve uptime and cut production losses, the company entered into an ABB Motion OneCare service agreement where ABB has taken full responsibility for servicing around 55 ABB drives from all life-cycle stages. The ABB Motion OneCare agreement was customized to Ruchira Papers' needs, and it includes preventive maintenance, on-site support during interruptions, technical support via Remote Visual Guidance, spare parts inventory management, reconditioning, and modernization services or replacement.
In the two years since the agreement went into effect, uptime has already risen to 94.8%, an increase of almost 13%. The goal is to continuously increase uptime while gradually modernizing drives that are nearing the end of their life cycle.
“ABB provides timely, high-quality service under our agreement and has contributed to improved performance and increased revenues. We value their expertise and technology, so we have decided to extend our collaboration for at least three more years,” says Sandeep Kalsi, General Manager of the Electrical Department at Ruchira Papers.
“Ruchira’s confidence in our ABB Motion OneCare contract was reinforced by the 13% increase in uptime. Our agreement provides greater value because it is having a 360-degree and comprehensive view of services to the customer. The trust that Ruchira papers placed in our agreement strengthen our strategy to serve the ever-expanding paper market,” said Amit B. Gupta, Local Division Manager, ABB Motion Services, India.
