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2024 Innovation of the Year Award Winner:
ARGUS Smart-Connected Technologies
Entered By: Kadant Carmanah
Date of First Use: May 2023
Benefit 1: Prevents unscheduled downtime at the strander with condition monitoring and analysis in real-time.
Benefit 2: Monitors strand quality, improves throughput, and reduce strand deviation in real-time.
Measurable results from case studies:
1. Within the first three months of the first pilot installation, the ARGUS Condition Monitoring & Intelligence (CMI) system prevented eight hours
of unscheduled downtime by identifying a failing bearing related to excessive drive belt tension. The mill was able to replace the bearing on a scheduled down day and correct the belt tension to prevent further failures.
2. At our second pilot installation, the ARGUS Fines Measurement System (FMS) was installed at the strander outfeed, green screen discharge and blender infeed. The mill can track strand degradation throughout the entire process and now has the ability to fine-tune resin and wax application to match the fines percentage in real time.
Description: ARGUS Smart-Connected Technologies combines and analyzes data from our proprietary vision systems, an array of condition-monitoring sensors and existing PLC tags to provide OSB producers with data-driven insights about how their strander is operating in real time. Live dashboards and reporting delivers accurate trending for Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), with the ability to benchmark strander performance across multiple operators, shifts and/or lines.
Additional Details:
ARGUS Smart-Connected Technologies was developed by Kadant Carmanah, to provide OSB woodroom operators and management with the data they need to produce better quality strands at higher production rates, while preventing unexpected downtime at the strander. This innovation combines 3 different proprietary systems to deliver the metric for Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) at the strander, so that OSB producers can make more informed decisions about how to optimize the productivity of their stranding operation in real-time:
System 1: ARGUS Log Fill Optimizer (LFO) – this is a vision system that scans the log fill level at the strander infeed, measuring the amount of wood the strander consumes in real-time. OSB mills can now modify their infeed for higher fill rates, increased throughput, and improved operational efficiency. The ARGUS LFO unlocks the OEE metric for Performance.
System 2: ARGUS Condition Monitoring & Intelligence (CMI) – this is a series of condition monitoring sensors that have been installed across all strander components and assemblies, to collect and analyze data-driven insight about how the strander is operating in real-time. OSB mills can now identify bottlenecks at the strander and detect equipment anomalies in real time, and take immediate action to avoid unexpected downtime. The ARGUS CMI unlocks the OEE metric for Availability.
System 3: ARGUS Fines Measurement System (FMS) – a vision system that continuously scans the strander outfeed conveyor to provide real-time fines percentages for every cutting pass. Automating the strand sampling process in real-time removes the variability and bias associated with inconsistent and infrequent strand collection procedures currently done manually. With access to a far greater number of accurate strand samples, OSB producers can now make more informed process improvement decisions in real-time. The ARGUS FMS unlocks the OEE metric for Quality.
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