Honeywell introduces SaaS offering for paper and flat sheet industries

Honeywell has announced a new Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) offering for quality control and improved yields in the paper and flat sheet industries. By connecting machines and quality control systems (QCS) of paper, plastic, rubber, aluminum and other sheet production to the cloud, using big data and applying analytics, Honeywell QCS 4.0 helps manufacturers maintain quality, eliminate waste, cut costs and boost production.

The new technology connects customers’ quality control systems to the Honeywell Sentience Internet of things (IoT) platform that delivers robust and secure big data capabilities for Honeywell’s connected solutions. QCS 4.0 continuously evaluates process performance, identifies improvement opportunities and maintains peak performance. This is the company’s first cloud-based Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solution for the paper and flat sheet industries.

Independent experts estimate that digital technologies like these can cut production costs by up to 15 percent.

Nick Parker, vice president and general manager of HPS’ Lifecycle Service Solutions business, says, “As paper and flat sheet industries are facing expanding global markets and fierce competition, they are under immense pressure to cut costs and increase efficiencies. The solution lies in new intelligent services that preserve existing assets, provide step-by-step upgrades, and are backed by fast return on investment (ROI).Our big data tools, software and the cloud provide manufacturers with the data storage, processing power and analytics they need to better balance cost, quality and production.”

QCS 4.0 offers the real-time visibility and actionable insights to meet a range of today’s operational requirements and to invest for future growth and challenges. This includes:

* Improving overall equipment effectiveness (OEE)

* Addressing low control utilization, poor performance and process variation

* Benchmarking paper machine performance against peer machines

* Responding to timely notifications on performance deviation

* Sustaining overall performance through process changes and disturbances

The SaaS offering allows users not only to maintain quality, but also to reduce breaks, predict servicing and proactively tune machines to maximize profits.