From Reactive to Predictive: How Plant Historian and Sensor Integration Are Revolutionizing Pulp & Paper Operations
- Carla Medina
- Sep 15
- 5 min read
Predictive maintenance needs a data-first strategy, starting now
In the pulp and paper industry, where production lines operate around the clock and unplanned downtime can result in millions of dollars in costs, the distinction between reactive and predictive maintenance is crucial. The critical business factor in the paper industry is the maintenance time of the paper-making machinery. By optimizing the timing and nature of maintenance, you can significantly impact the productivity and production costs of the entire production line.
An incident at a mill in 2020 serves as a stark reminder of the financial risks involved. An overheating busbar failure in their turbo generator resulted in significant losses, highlighting how traditional maintenance methods often fail to prevent catastrophic events. While manual thermographic inspections have been the standard practice, they are proving inadequate for the complexities of modern pulp and paper operations.
Pulp mills today face unique challenges, including massive machinery, intricate mechanical systems, and high-voltage electrical infrastructure. Environmental factors, such as temperature fluctuations ranging from 13°C to 35°C (55°F to 95°F) in regions like Três Lagoas, also affect equipment performance. Consequently, effective maintenance is crucial for optimizing performance, increasing productivity, and reducing costs.
The limitations of traditional approaches in pulp & paper operations
Traditional maintenance methodologies present critical vulnerabilities in pulp and paper environments:
Manual thermography constraints: Regular thermal inspections expose technicians to high-voltage environments while offering only intermittent snapshots of equipment health. In an industry characterized by rapid changes, infrequent inspections can create dangerous blind spots.
Process integration gaps: Traditional methodologies often treat equipment in isolation, ignoring the interactions between mechanical systems, electrical infrastructure, and process variables. For instance, the performance of a digester can affect downstream equipment, but siloed monitoring approaches overlook these interdependencies.
Operational disruption: Manual inspections often require production slowdowns or shutdowns, directly impacting the continuous operation that pulp mills depend on for profitability.
Inconsistent data quality: Human interpretation of thermal patterns, combined with varying inspection frequencies, creates data inconsistencies that make it harder to recognize trends and predict outcomes.
Plant Historian: The central nervous system of modern pulp mills
Plant Historian has emerged as the foundational technology transforming how pulp and paper operations manage critical assets. A Plant Historian (or Process Historian) is a client/server application for the acquisition, display, archiving, and reporting of information from a wide variety of control, plant, and business systems.
In pulp and paper applications, the Plant Historian serves as the central hub, integrating data from various sources, including IoT sensors, gas chromatography systems, and ERP platforms. This integration offers unparalleled visibility into the relationships between asset health and process performance that manual methods cannot provide.
The 2020 case illustrates the efficacy of Plant Historian. Self-powered wireless sensors continuously monitor turbogenerator busbars, sending temperature and current data to the central Plant Historian platform via Zigbee networks. This system maintains accuracy within 1°C while minimizing safety risks and operational disruptions associated with manual inspections.
For transformer monitoring, Plant Historian combines laboratory-dissolved gas analysis with advanced analytical models. This multifaceted approach enables sophisticated fault classification, providing critical insights that will allow pulp mills to optimize maintenance timing.
Sensor-driven intelligence: beyond simple monitoring
Modern sensor integration in pulp and paper operations goes well beyond basic temperature monitoring. The use of self-powered wireless sensors combined with Plant Historian creates dynamic asset intelligence systems that meet the industry’s specific operational needs.
Environmental factor integration: Pulp mills face significant environmental variability impacting equipment performance. For example, temperature fluctuations can increase the resistivity of busbar connections, affecting operational efficiency.
Process correlation analysis: Plant Historian platforms help connect asset health data with process variables. When digester temperature affects downstream electrical loading, or when paper machine speed variations impact drive motor conditions, integrated systems detect these relationships and adjust maintenance strategies accordingly.
Automated response capabilities: Linking with maintenance management systems enables automatic work order creation and provides real-time notifications. When sensor data shows potential failures, the system promptly generates maintenance tasks and alerts relevant staff, removing delays associated with manual monitoring.
The economic transformation: quantifying Plant Historian impact
Smart sensors and data analytics are enabling predictive maintenance and real-time monitoring, ensuring efficient operations and minimizing downtime. Industry analysis reveals that predictive maintenance delivers significant gains: a 25%-30% reduction in maintenance costs, a 70%-75% decrease in equipment failures, and 35%-45% less unplanned downtime.
Advanced transformer monitoring through dissolved gas analysis, integrated with Plant Historian, has enhanced fault detection capabilities, thereby safeguarding critical electrical infrastructure.
OEE enhancement: Improving Overall Equipment Effectiveness with Plant Historian-enabled maintenance directly increases pulp mill profitability. By simultaneously optimizing equipment availability, performance, and quality, integrated systems address the three main aspects of manufacturing efficiency.
Resource optimization: Automated monitoring reduces the human resources required for routine inspections, while improving safety and accuracy. Technicians can focus on value-added maintenance activities rather than routine data collection and analysis.
Advanced analytics: The intelligence layer
The true power of modern maintenance systems lies in the analytical capabilities that Plant Historian platforms enable. Advanced models such as the IEC 60599 standard for transformer dissolved gas analysis, combined with Individual Gas Method and Duval Triangle approaches, turn raw sensor data into actionable maintenance intelligence.
When Plant Historian platforms integrate data from various sources, they generate comprehensive operational insights that support strategic decision-making. Analyzing historical data reveals equipment degradation patterns specific to pulp mill operating conditions, enabling more precise maintenance scheduling and resource planning.
Implementation strategy: Building sustainable digital infrastructure
Successful implementation of Plant Historian requires a strategic approach that addresses both technical integration and organizational change management. Starting with critical assets, such as turbogenerators and transformers, helps organizations demonstrate value while building internal capabilities.
Implementing Plant Historian builds the data management infrastructure needed for future innovations, including advanced analytics and AI applications that will shape the next generation of maintenance optimization.
The strategic imperative: Leading the digital transformation
The industry is facing mounting pressures, including sustainability requirements, margin compression, and global competition. Organizations that leverage Plant Historian and sensor integration to optimize asset performance while building data management capabilities for future innovations will establish themselves as industry leaders.
With proven technologies demonstrating clear ROI and competitive advantages, the question isn’t whether to embrace this transformation, but how quickly and effectively to implement it.
The future of pulp & paper asset management
For pulp and paper operations, transitioning from reactive to predictive maintenance using Plant Historian and sensors is critical for competitiveness. Risky and inefficient legacy methods can be replaced by technology proven to prevent failures, optimize maintenance, and build data for improvement.
Success requires vision, expertise, and implementation excellence, forming a partnership between mills and digital engineering providers. Asset management transformation is key to the industry’s digital future.
Key Insights:
Learn the vulnerabilities of traditional maintenance methods in pulp and paper operations.
Understand how Plant Historian integrates sensor data for real-time asset intelligence.
Discover economic benefits, including 25%-30% lower maintenance costs and 70%-75% fewer failures.
Gain strategies for implementing Plant
Ready to transform your pulp mill with predictive maintenance?
Contact our team to explore Plant Historian and sensor integration solutions:
About Radix
Founded in 2010, Radix is a privately held technology solutions and services company operating globally, empowering customers with consulting, engineering, operations technology, and digital solutions. Radix combines key capabilities and practices to enable our worldwide customers to thrive in their digital journey. With North American headquarters in Houston, TX, and global headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, including offices in São Paulo and Belo Horizonte, Radix provides technology-based, data-driven solutions to asset-intensive industries. Radix's robust capabilities extend to more than 30 countries worldwide. Learn more: www.radixeng.com
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