Enfasi Stands Out in the Pulp and Paper Industry

Background

The things that make Enfasi (Engineering & Full Automated System Italy) a well-known and appreciated System Integrator, in Italy and abroad, are the proficiency and the dynamism of its four associates. Treasuring their twenty years professional experience spent in a big international automation vendor, in 2009 they decided to start up an engineering company to provide integrated services in several industries: navy, metal, chemical, plastic and pulp and paper.

For the pulp and paper sector – which is still an industry with a strong footprint in the Lucca area, in Tuscany, where Enfasi is based – the young company delivers complete automation systems and offers its own Quality Control System (QCS), a solution designed to fit the increasing demand of quality in the paper manufacturing sector. “A couple of years ago we decided to propose a QCS, which is entirely designed and developed by us,” says Marco Nieri, Enfasi co-founder together with Paolo Morselli, Antonello Lisi and Gabriele Campesan. “In 2012 we focused on the QCS development, exploring the very specific sector of quality control systems, which represented something different from our traditional Distributed Control Systems (DCS) field.” The Enfasi's offer also includes punctual post-sale customer service.

Challenge

Enfasi's customers in the pulp and paper industry are both machine builders and paper manufacturers. As Nieri says: “In those cases where our customer is the paper manufacturer and the end user of the control system, we can say it's easier to understand each other as we speak the same language; we can share our know-how and we are able to propose tailor-made solutions, conceived to improve manufacturing control efficiency and to make operators job more comfortable and easier.” In order to provide end users with a user-friendly interface, which allows them to precisely monitor and manage the paper manufacturing process and the paper quality specifications, Enfasi decided to base its automation solution on the Rockwell Automation process control system.

“We selected Rockwell Automation because we wanted to go to the pulp & paper market offering a state-of-the-art automation system, which could give added value to the customer and could represent a differentiating key factor for us,” says Paolo Morselli, who adds that in the pulp & paper industry “most of the System Integrators usually build control solutions based on products from other automation suppliers.

The Rockwell Automation PlantPAx™ system allows Enfasi to offer an integrated solution, on a single platform, which manages both the production line and the quality control system. “According to this approach, our customer is provided with an efficient single tool to manage its plant and to fit the increasing demand of quality for the final product,” Morselli adds.

Solution

The Quality Control System has been designed to in-line measure and control the paper quality specifications (weight, moisture, ashes, etc.). Enfasi decided to build the hardware and software architecture of its system using only Rockwell Automation components. Enfasi's aim was to create a single control, visualization, development and diagnostics platform, which had to include the QCS, the DCS and the drives.

In the solution, three controllers manage the QCS, the DCS and the frequency inverters; the process measurement devices, the control system and the visualization platform communicate via Ethernet. The operator can monitor the plant using local workstations on a panel terminal.

PlantPAx, the Rockwell Automation process control system, manages the signals coming from the measurement devices in the plant and the data coming from the paper making industrial process. Based on the Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture, PlantPAx, with its standard database, makes the data generated in the system immediately available and easily accessible for the different software modules in the overall system.

The single interface and the common software environment are the peculiarities of Enfasi automation solution: all the systems in the plant use the same instructions, are connected on the same network and share the same development and visualization platform. According to this system architecture, the paper manufacturer can rely on a single platform to have access and to supervise the entire plant and can include all the devices it needs on it, once they are pre-configured with PlantPAx.

Results

Using a common programming environment and taking advantage of the high data processing capacity of the PlantPAx controllers, Enfasi can save time in system engineering and can focus on the interface customization.

As Paolo Morselli adds: “Adopting Rockwell Automation hardware and software solutions, we can offer a high end system with a high level of personalization.” Enfasi adapted the PlantPAx library to the requirements of plant floor operators in the pulp & paper industry, who usually need a small amount of information and are not interested in having the big quantities of data required in more complex process industries, such as chemical and pharmaceutical.

The HMI software also helped Enfasi to implement advanced graphic controls for production trends analysis,which can be organized according to pulp & paper industry specifications.“Thanks to Rockwell Automation and to the technical support provided by the Rockwell Automation guys, we hit our target and can approach the pulp & paper industry as a System Integrator with a unique offer,” Morselli concludes. “Our customer can turn to us to have a single interface system to manage and visualize both their process and the quality of their final product.”

The results mentioned above are specific to EnFasi's use of Rockwell Automation products and services in conjunction with other products. Specific results may vary for other customers.