Poland produces about six tons of packaging annually, of which more than one-third is paper packaging. In recent years, exports have grown to reach a value of about €100 million per month.
Mondi Świecie S.A. is a major European supplier of Containerboard grades. In order to further increase production safety and at the same time reduce energy consumption – the company has been investing for several years in Industry 4.0 solutions.
The mill has installed the ABB Ability™ Electrical Distribution Control System (EDCS), which works directly with the new switchgear on the paper machine. The system focuses on the recuperation process, which recovers the facility’s exhaust heat and transfers it to the supplied air, thereby decreasing the mill’s energy consumption. If the recuperation system works effectively, the power losses needed to raise the air temperature in the paper machine are reduced.
ABB Ability™ EDCS monitors the devices, alerts for any anomalies and ensures that the energy distribution is smooth. Because the solution uses a cloud-computing platform, the operator can safely check the condition of the devices and read the measured data from any location, at any time.
“Real-time monitoring, along with alerts, gives us the ability to continuously diagnose the system," said Marcin Gulczyński, head of the Electro-Automation Department at Mondi Świecie S.A. “In this way, we can monitor the system wherever and whenever it’s convenient for us, for example working remotely from home. We are currently testing all the functions of the new switchgear and system, but we can already see the benefits of the new solution.”
One of the innovations of the implemented solution is the prediction module. After sending relevant data from the system to the cloud platform, the amount of "wearing" experienced by a particular device can be determined. In this way, the operator can adjust the maintenance to the scheduled service stop. This is important, because we can shift from breakdown management to preventive management. With this approach we do not lose time and money for unscheduled shutdowns.
“We are witnessing an increased demand for remote services among our customers,” said Radosław Dudzik, ABB Digital Solutions Business Development manager in Poland. “Cloud computing systems are a natural solution. This way we enable secure access to sensitive data and the possibility of diagnosis from any device connected to the Internet. A person no longer has to stand by the device and physically check that everything works properly. He can simply log on to the system. And in case of anomalies, he will be notified by e-mail or SMS."
