Yokogawa GMSC of Cowes, UK, with its Exaquantum Plant Information Management System (PIMS), has achieved operational expense (OPEX) savings of over $2m for the operators of one of the world's largest paper mills, Celulose Nipo-Brasileira S.A. (Cenibra), and more are expected. The plant is amongst Brazil's most important producers of paper, producing 940 000 tones of Eucalyptus Bleached Pulp per annum currently. The factory is based in Belo Oriente, Minas Gerais State, Brazil. Production began in 1977 and has steadily increased to its current level.

Nigel Bowden, Yokogawa GMSC Managing Director explains: "The company has been a user of Yokogawa distributed control systems (DCS) for many years, initially with a Centum XL, now upgraded to the current Centum CS3000. When the company needed a PIMS in 2002 Yokogawa was evaluated and Cenibra management chose the Exaquantum PIMS application with a requirement for 7,500 tags and 25 concurrent clients."

Proved Benefits

Since its introduction in January 2004, Exaquantum has repaid for itself many times over. There have been three main quantifiable benefits: Reduced downtime: prior to the installation of Exaquantum the plant suffered repeatedly from blockages in the initial digester unit requiring almost the whole line to be stopped while the digester was unblocked. Based on the gathering of data and by cross-variable analysis, Cenibra has been able to determine the root cause of problem and reduce the level of digester blockage by a factor of six. This has resulted in additional production worth $60,000 p.a. Reduced Chlorine Dioxide: Chlorine Dioxide is a necessary and expensive chemical additive to the bleaching process. Through historical data analysis, Cenibra has a better understanding of the relationship between the level of ClO2 and pulp quality. As a result, Cenibra has been able to reduce its ClO2 consumption by 12.8%, resulting in annual savings of $1.2m.

Reduced Fuel Consumption: Exaquantum has enabled Cenibra to quantify the energy balance involved in its processes. As a result they have been able to reduce their heat input, saving 7,500 tones of oil per month, equivalent to $750,000 per year.

Additional MES Level Applications

Later in 2004, a multi-disciplinary team of five staff from Cenibra developed a prototype Key Performance Indicator (KPI) system. This was based on standard Exaquantum/Excel access interface and produced calculations for two key areas - loop control assessment and machinery assessment. The success of this prototype led to Cenibra to commissioning an intelligent KPI management application in an integrated Web environment. This application can receive tags from Exaquantum, produce KPI calculations and then return its scripts back to the PIMS in the form of native Calc tags. Exaquantum is then able output these results to operators and engineering staff using its Web graphics interface. The results are also fed back to the Centum DCSs to control the production system.

Extension to Exaquantum

Cenibra has recently extended its Exaquantum system from 7,500 to 20,000 tags and 41 concurrent users. Software and hardware were smoothly upgraded last March (2005). The increase was required to accommodate utilities and recovery boiler plants, as well as to cater for increased productive capacity currently being developed. The key reason for the increased number of tags in Exaquantum is the development of additional applications on top of the historian database. The bulk of such increase comes from calculated tags, which Cenibra is producing to help generate control assessment KPIs, production KPIs, equipment assessment KPIs and others.

Nigel Bowden adds: "The plant management team had extensive experience of the Yokogawa Centum DCSs which gave them confidence in Yokogawa products and supporting service. Yokogawa and Cenibra worked very closely together to produce the outstanding savings that have been achieved. They flow from three key factors:

"One, the system requirements were taken carefully, involving the correct stakeholders of each area, bearing in mind that MES functionalities are highly customized and scattered in terms of usage over the whole enterprise structure; two, the utilization of a multi-disciplinary approach, involving customer personnel from different areas, such as process engineering, IT, quality control, laboratory and maintenance engineering, and, three, a high level of partnership was established between Yokogawa and Cenibra right from the initial system conception through design and implementation. This close cooperation continues, with Yokogawa providing ongoing consultancy."

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Notes for Editors:

1. Yokogawa is a world leader in information management systems for process industries. The company provides a systems development and integration capability specializing in integrated information systems for process industries throughout the world. The Yokogawa 'Exaquantum' Plant Information Management System (PIMS) delivers benefits for plant operators in many process industries in most parts of the world. Yokogawa PIMS integrate data from many systems in a plant and produce high value business information for use by decision makers at all levels of the enterprise. Yokogawa PIMS automatically integrate data from process control systems, including Distributed Control Systems (DCS) and Programmable Logic Controllers (PLC), with other data from quality, maintenance, laboratory, planning, scheduling, Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) and many other systems. Yokogawa PIMS convert Plant Data into Business Information.
   
   
2. The Yokogawa software being installed today is already in use in chemicals, food, petrochemicals, oil & gas, pharmaceuticals, power generation and general manufacturing throughout the world, providing monitoring, management, optimization, modeling and control of many diverse, dynamic, and hazardous processes, in often the largest plants.
   
   
3. Issued for and on behalf Christian Beasley: Yokogawa Marex Ltd (GMSC), Marex House, 34 Medina Road, Cowes, Isle of Wight, UK, PO31 7DA. Tel: +44 (0)1983 296011. Fax: +44 (0)1983 291776 e-mail: Christian.Beasley@ymx.yokogawa.com
   
   
4. Yokogawa Marex is now known as Yokogawa GMSC, reflecting its new role as the Global MES Solutions Centre for Yokogawa.
   
   
5. Yokogawa Marex (GMSC) Website: www.yokogawa.com/iis
   
   
6. Issued for and on behalf of Yokogawa Marex (GMSC) by John Ockenden, John Ockenden international public relations, Whindrum House, Methven, Perth PH1 3QU, United Kingdom. +44 (0)7710 391 054. e-mail: john@jockenden.freeserve.co.uk
   
   
7. Photographs (both high resolution electronic and print) and system/network graphics are available to accompany this story. Please contact John Ockenden or Christian Beasley.
   
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