A New Resource for R&M Professionals

Larry N. Montague
TAPPI President and CEO

For more than a decade, TAPPI has partnered with IDCON to provide its members with valuable information about reliability and maintenance issues in the pulp and paper industry. That’s why it’s exciting to finally be inaugurating this new section in Paper360°, TAPPI’s official member magazine.

I think a humming paper machine—whether it’s running tissue, kraft, liner, or a specialty grade—is a thing of beauty. It reflects the work of thousands of men and women designing, testing, delivering, and operating each component technology, from the smallest bearing to the largest supercalender and everything in between. Yet in spite of this wide range, each component has this in common: it MUST be kept in top working condition, or the entire system suffers. Because that’s true, we’ve seen incredible strides made in the science of reliability and maintenance throughout the past decades.

That’s where IDCON comes in. Their reliability and maintenance experience and philosophy is a great fit for our industry, and their audit and benchmarking strategies have a proven track record. We’ve heard for years that TAPPI members and Paper360° readers want specialized R&M information they can really use in their mills—and it makes sense for TAPPI to turn to the experts to provide it. I feel it offers members and readers a real advantage to have this information delivered straight to their desktops (both genuine and virtual!) in these pages.

And we’re not stopping here. TAPPI and IDCON will be expanding this partnership to also deliver a dedicated R&M website with valuable additional content, a free newsletter, online communities (Connect and LinkedIn groups), events, and more.

So keep those machines humming—and let us know what you’d like to see in these R&M pages. We’d love to hear from you!
Best regards,

Larry N. Montague
TAPPI President and CEO

Reliability Interview: Steven Mjoen, Catalyst Paper

Steven Mjoen,
Catalyst Paper

In this series of short interviews, we connect with R&M professionals in our industry who share ideas and experiences. If you would like to be interviewed (or you’d like to suggest a colleague or customer), contact Tor Idhammar at [email protected].

Where you work: I work for Catalyst Paper, Crofton division, which is located on southern Vancouver Island near Duncan, BC. We are an integrated paper and pulp manufacturing division with two operating paper machines and two pulp machines.

What you really do: In my role as reliability manager, I am responsible for the lubrication mechanics, vibration analysts, rebuild shop, and machine shop. In addition, I have been acting as interim maintenance manager for the past few months and am also the champion of the Reliability Revitalization initiative for our plant.

That’s an unusual last name: It’s Norwegian—I even speak a little.

Hobbies: Living in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, I spend as much time outdoors as possible—either on the water or hiking in the mountains.

How good is your mill in reliability, on a scale 1-10 (10 being the best)? We are a large integrated pulp and paper plant; we have some areas that are a 3, while other areas are a 6. Hence, the reason for the Reliability Revitalization initiative.

Biggest reliability issue(s) at the mill: Attrition and the loss of the experience that we have come to rely on.

What activities are ongoing to improve reliability? We are in the midst of a Reliability Revitalization, re-launching past best practices and introducing new best practices.

Biggest obstacles to achieving your goal: Competing initiatives and a mindset that Reliability is a project instead of a change in the way that we conduct business.

Biggest resources you have for achieving your goal: We have overwhelming support by management for freeing up individuals. This includes having brought IDCON Inc. on board for the Reliability Revitalization.