PTMS at Harmac Pulp Operations, Pope & Talbot Ltd.

The Situation:

The Harmac mill located in Nanaimo BC, was dependent on an old real-time computer system for controlling pulp production, stenciling, and assignment to orders on its 3 finishing lines. In 1998 the system was obsolete, unreliable, and a high risk to mill operation. The computer and software could no longer be supported and computer failure was imminent. Harmac needed to replace the computer and operating system software as quickly as possible within a reasonable budget.

The Solution:

The company required commercially available software that had the desired capabilities and was easy to use. The product had to be customized to suit Harmac's needs and be implemented promptly.

Harmac chose PTMS because the product had already been proven at a number of other pulp mills in North America and overseas. PTMS featured a modern user-friendly graphical interface, which made it easy to use and reduced training costs. Also, because the product was used by a number of other companies in similar business capacity, future costs for maintenance and system support would be lower.

As the supplier of the finished product tracking business system, QES was uniquely qualified to ensure seamless integration between the business and real time production systems at Harmac, and could provide an operational system sooner than one built from scratch. QES also had complementary real time product tracking and test data management software, and they were familiar with many of the business practices and requirements of the mill.

Results:

Harmac worked with QES to create a set of design specifications that enabled QES to customize the PTMS program for Harmac's particular business requirements.

QES installed PTMS on site and worked extensively with mill personnel to test the system, stay on schedule, and solve problems as they arose. Defects appeared mainly due to unreliability in the existing field hardware, and issues involved in interfacing a variety of computer systems from different vendors. QES cooperated fully to solve these problems as they were identified. QES also provided training to Harmac personnel concurrent with system integration and testing duties.

PTMS was successfully implemented at Harmac before the previous system failed. Startup was worked into the existing mill schedule. The project was an enormous undertaking for all of the personnel involved. According to Leo Choy, "Success was due greatly to the vendor's talented and dedicated system developers, as well as Harmac's consultants for business systems and engineering".