Product Property Estimation in Real-Time

See What You Make, as You Make It

Move QC Lab Test Results to On-Line Virtual Sensors

Lab-based Quality Control means the production line makes product, a sample is taken to the lab, one or more tests are done, some tests may take hours, days or even a week or more, the results are reviewed and then materials or process conditions are adjusted to keep product on-spec.

Product characteristics are substantially based upon the materials characteristics and the process conditions used to create the product. If you have a model or models that relate materials and process to quality you can supply the current materials and process data to the model and have an estimate of the quality, immediately. Putting such a model on-line gives you a real-time indication of quality immediately as product is made, not hours, days or even a week later. As you change setpoints or materials you see the quality estimate respond in real-time. This is a major benefit.

Creating theoretical equations for some product properties is just too hard or cannot be done. Take for example wet burst strength of paper towels or toilet paper. Writing such an equation is a doctoral thesis at a minimum. However, with our modeling technology you can take a history of process and materials data vs. QC lab results and build a useful model in a couple minutes. With our on-line Intellect Server the model can be put on-line easily, receiving streaming conditions in and estimating product characteristics out, in real-time. Now if the operator makes an adjustment, or you change a material add, you see the effect immediately. When performance starts moving out of spec the operator can immediately make adjustments to bring it back to specification.

Explore the Data and Models for Superior Process, Materials and Product Understanding

Explore your data and the models response, visualizing trends, 2D and 3D scatter plots of process and materials vs. properties, response curves and surfaces, doing what-ifs in Excel, all to greatly enhance your understanding of what drives your product performance and how to improve performance and reduce costs. For example, one customer was able to determine just the right amount of costly material to use. No more, no less.

Autonomous Self-Maintenance

Since we have an ongoing stream of materials properties, process conditions and lab tests (yes, lab testing continues) our system can access that data automatically and compare its estimates with lab tests and self-calibrate accordingly. No work on your part. We can monitor the solution remotely as we do world-wide today for other customers.

Benefits Enumerated

Benefits achieved include:

• Product properties are shown to operations, engineering and product managers in real-time
• Correct quality problems before the lab even tests a sample
• Improve your understanding of product performance drivers
• Improve your understanding of the response those drivers have on numerous quality metrics
• Improve quality while reducing cost