With today’s ecommerce-driven society, paper and packaging quality is now a metric perceived far more important than ever before. But how do we improve quality and take the traditional laboratories into the digital realm without increasing workload and over stretching capabilities?

The answer to this lies in new testing processes that not only deliver more relevant, digitally enabled data but do so without requiring so much manual intervention.

The pulp and paper industry is facing multiple challenges, with demands to boost quality, increase efficiency, improve sustainability and modernize, in general.

This is especially true for the packaging segment, which has seen an explosion in demand over the past 18 months with the pandemic-driven upturn in ecommerce and home deliveries. This has put pressure on in-house testing departments to assess the strength of packaging paper grades rapidly and accurately. Put simply, weak corrugated board does not make good boxes, and can result in goods being damaged in transit.

Quality is now more critical than ever, but tedious, overly protracted testing routines not only add time and cost; their less accurate clipboard-based approach to data gathering is not necessarily in tune with modern Industry 4.0-driven operations.

To improve quality, we need to accurately measure the quality of paper, but we need to do so by measuring the ‘right’ properties – those that give us more relevant information. To be truly effective, we need to measure in a simpler, faster, and more automated way to save time, cost and energy.  The solution to these challenges is twofold – adopting new testing methods and embracing more automation and digitalization.

New methods of paper testing improve on traditional methods by providing information that is more accurate and relevant for paper mills to optimize their processes and produce a superior-quality product at a lower cost.

For packaging grades, an example of this is the S-Test method, performed using ABB’s L&W S-Tester, which predicts crush elasticity in medium fluting. This gives more relevant information about the strength of corrugated board compared to the maximum strength measured by traditional methods, such as Concora Medium Test (CMT), as it measures the point when the board starts to lose its elasticity and begins to fail.

The S-Test method is less time-consuming and requires fewer manual operations than the CMT method. It also gives new insights on the actual strength needs and means of achieving this, allowing paper mills to reduce their surface starch levels in many cases. Without such insight, starch often needs to be increased above functional levels just to reach the desired CMT max levels. For that alone, the starch savings can be quite high depending on the paper construction applied.

Another example is the Short-span Compression Test (SCT) method, which gives a more accurate measurement as the short span of compression does not cause buckling in material, and therefore the failure is purely compressive. Traditional methods, such as Ring Crush Test (RCT), underestimate the strength of low grammage material because of buckling and require several manual operations, which introduce further inaccuracies.

LMS removes multiple potentially error-prone manual procedures and automatically captures sample measurements from lab equipment, before delivering these results into customizable dashboards, providing users with data storage, management, analysis and reporting.

The benefit of such systems is that they take into account the nuances of pulp and paper lab technicians and provide a foundation for quality management without an elaborate and expensive quality data-management system. A step change to better lab practices and happier lab technicians!

Armed with this digital laboratory, data is available quicker than ever before, allowing operations managers to make far more pertinent, real-time lineside decisions. This ultimately saves time, cost, and effort, while maintaining the quality levels and traceability demanded by today’s ecommerce driven society.