For a number of years on-line machinery condition and runnability monitoring systems have allowed maintenance departments and paper mill operating staff to measure machinery vibration, process pulsation and paper quality in order to detect mechanical deterioration or process stability problems at an early stage. With the analysis tools built into these systems, developing problems have been averted, thereby reducing the occurrence of unscheduled downtime and improving runnability. Preventive maintenance scheduling and papermachine fabric changes have been made more proactive and effective.
Today, industry standards for network communications and emerging industry standards for operating systems and operator interfaces are facilitating the development of millwide networks. With the adoption of these standards, the seams between process control systems, quality control, production management and information systems are dissolving. Operations, quality control, and engineering personnel are now multiple users on the same network. Similarly, on-line machinery condition and runnability monitoring systems are becoming an integral part of the same network. Distributed architectures and high speed communications allow maintenance and operations personnel to analyze the same process and machinery condition information.
While general information sharing is becoming commonplace, there is a continuing need for machinery condition and runnability monitoring systems to offer their specific users more insight into the complex, dynamic area of machinery condition, process pulsation and paper quality interactions. These task-oriented systems have recently introduced new signal processing techniques and user tools to make predictive maintenance diagnosis and operator interaction more insightful and effective.