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TREES. THE POET, JOYCE KILMER,WROTE AB OUT THEM AS THINGS
OF BEAUTY. The construction industry
sees them as a basic necessity for building
homes. Conservationists worry about
them as a renewable resource.
And J.M. Huber Corp. helps everyone
interested in trees by engineering high-
tech wood products. J.M. Huber is able to
extract more usable lumber from each
tree, often resulting in a stronger wood
product than the original tree.
J.M. Huber is a privately held global
company founded in 1883 that is active in
the oil, gas, mineral, specialty chemicals,
and engineered wood industries. Its Huber
Engineered Woods group creates high-
performance specialty wood products—
called oriented strand board, or OSB—
that improve productivity in the construc-
tion and furniture industries. The OSB
lines of flooring, sheathing, and panels are
high-quality, economical, and environ-
mentally friendly substitutes for lumber
and plywood in construction, repair, and
remodeling.
J.M. Huber’s own productivity is
21SPRING 20 03 • h o t l i n k sh o t l i n k s • SPRING 20 0320
C A S E S T U D Y
A manufacturer of high-performancespecialty wood products uses
Wonderware’s InTouch® HMI andIndustrialSQL Server™ database tools
to streamline production.
What Would J.M. Huber Do?
HLS0304_20_25_JMHuber.qxd 5/21/03 12:19 PM Page 20
This is essential to achieving the desired
structural strength.
The bulk wafers are treated with
waxes and resins that cause them to adhere
to each other and form the mat that is the
first stage of board production. The
treated wafers enter forming machines and
are shaped into continuous eight-foot-
wide mats that run almost the length of
the production building. Each mat starts
as a loose mass of treated wafers. As they
progress down the line, the mats are saw-
cut into 24-foot lengths.
Each mat is transferred to a special
heat-resistant screen base for loading into
a large heat press. Here, they’re com-
pressed, 12 mats at a time, under high
temperature and pressure to form the ori-
ented strand boards. To make an OSB
that’s seven-sixteenths of an inch thick, the
mat must be 5 inches thick. To make a
quarter-inch-thick board takes a 3-inch-
high wafer mat.
Once they leave the press, the com-
pressed mats are cooled as they proceed
down the line. Then they’re finish-cut into
four-by-eight-foot wood panels.
The panels are edge-sanded, the
Huber logo is spray-painted onto one side,
and the panels are strapped together for
bulk loading onto railroad freight cars or
tractor-trailer trucks.
The result is a broad array of prod-
ucts for the building industry, including
the PerformMAX line of sub-flooring, the
AdvanTech line of flooring and sheathing
panels, the CedarStran line of cedar panels
for closets and storage areas, and the
“Huber Blue” line of OSB flooring and
sheathing panels used to frame houses. All
of these products possess strength and
wear characteristics that far exceed those
offered by standard plywood or particle-
board products. The OSB process pro-
duces more finished lumber than simply
sawing the incoming trees into boards
could create.
High Demand for HighVolume
HU B E R E N G I N E E R E D WO O D
P R O D U C T S A R E S O P O P U L A R
T H AT T H E C O M PA N Y WA S S T R U G -GLING TO MAKE THEM FAST ENOUGH,U N T I L T H E C O M PA N Y B E G A N U S I N G
WO N D E R WA R E ® S O F T WA R E . The
plant’s first InTouch HMI system was
installed in 1997—and it still provides the
process visualization screens that opera-
tors use to run much of the production
equipment. In the case of the dryer opera-
tors, the InTouch HMI provides visualiza-
tion and control of operations they cannot
physically see, because the operators are
located approximately 300 feet from the
massive dryer equipment.
When it came time to upgrade and
expand the system, J.M. Huber’s staff
decided to take advantage of the latest
Wonderware technology—Terminal
Services for InTouch. This allowed them to
upgrade three existing HMI workstations
and add another three users for new func-
tionality. Instead of buying new PCs to
replace the old workstations—at roughly
$2,000 each—J.M. Huber bought ACP
Thin Client stations loaded with Terminal
Services for InTouch software, saving the
company approximately $1,000 per user.
In addition, the three new stations
the company added were cost-justified by
the replacement of chart recorders that
incurred high expenses for consumable
supplies.
23SPRING 20 03 • h o t l i n k s
C A S E S T U D Y
enhanced by the deployment of Wonderware’s FactorySuite® line of
software products. At its OSB facility in the rolling hills and pine
forests of northern Georgia, InTouch® human-machine interface
(HMI) software facilitates operator visualization of the wood
process and optimal production control. J.M. Huber also uses the
IndustrialSQL Server™ real-time database for historical archiving
of production data. Wonderware’s ActiveFactory™ software manip-
ulates and trends historical data to streamline process operations,
yielding higher volumes of high-quality wood products. J.M. Huber
is also an early adopter of Wonderware’s new Terminal Services for
InTouch thin-client technology.
The Huber Engineered Woods plant in Commerce, Ga., north-
east of Atlanta, is one of the most efficient in the J.M. Huber organi-
zation. The plant has increased its annual production every year
since its inception.
Efficient But Complex Process
TH E H U B E R E N G I N E E R E D WO O D S P L A N T R E C E I V E S
A P P R OX I M AT E LY 65 T RU C K LOA D S O F T R E E - L E N G T H
LOGS EVERY DAY. A huge crane piles the logs into massive stacks,
providing a three-week buffer of raw material inventory. The crane
feeds the logs into the debarking machine, which initiates the pro-
duction process. After most of the bark has been removed, the logs
are fed into twin “waferizer” machines, where they’re literally
chopped into wood chips, or wafers. The wafers are conveyed into
three large dryers, where they’re dried to specific moisture levels.
The wafers must retain different moisture levels, depending on
whether they will go into the core or outer surfaces of the OSBs.
THE WOOD PRODUCTS BEGIN LIFE AS LOGS LIFTED
FROM A THREE-WEEK SUPPLY STACK AND FED
THROUGH A “DEBARKER” AND THEN INTO TWO
“WAFERIZER” MACHINES, WHERE THEY ARE
TURNED INTO WOOD CHIPS, OR WAFERS.
THE BULK WAFERS ARE
TREATED WITH WAXES
AND RESINS AND
TURNED INTO 24-FOOT
LONG MATS. THEY ARE
THEN LOADED INTO A
HEAT PRESS AND
COMPRESSED UNDER
HIGH TEMPERATURE
TO FORM ORIENTED
STRAND BOARDS
(OSB).
HLS0304_20_25_JMHuber.qxd 5/21/03 12:19 PM Page 22
Server database and trending it with ActiveFactory software now
empowers the staff to “see” where they can eliminate dead time and
speed up the line. After installing the Wonderware software, Huber
Engineered Woods has been able to enhance production by increas-
ing line speeds by 8 to 10 percent within a few months.
Production efficiencies aren’t the only benefits that have been
generated by the J.M. Huber staff. Extensive studies of the archived
data in the real-time database has also improved maintenance for
complex systems like the regenerative thermal oxide (RTO) units
that treat the exhaust gases from the dryers. The RTO units filter
and incinerate gases so that the Commerce plant expels stack emis-
sions that are nearly 100-percent clean.
Previously, the plant staff had difficulty taking RTO units out
of service for routine maintenance inspection and service because
this equipment must run virtually nonstop. However, now that they
can monitor and trend differential pressures across the RTO units
and compare them to valve cycles, J.M. Huber employees can iden-
tify unusual trends right away and fix the offending equipment if
necessary. The information in the IndustrialSQL Server database is
essential to staff members who must decide whether to immediately
shut down a unit for repairs or do so during a routine maintenance
cycle.
More to Come
O F C O U R S E, T H E E F F I C I E N C I E S HU B E R EN G I N E E R E D
WO O D S H AV E M A D E A R E S I G N I F I C A N T, B U T T H E Y
R E P R E S E N T J U S T T H E B E G I N N I N G. J.M. Huber will continue
to strive to increase productivity in its Commerce plant by using
Wonderware’s InTouch, IndustrialSQL Server, ActiveFactory,
and Terminal Services for InTouch software to identify more time-
saving opportunities. THE END
25SPRING 20 03 • h o t l i n k s
The InTouch application now runs on a Dell server. Users log
on and run sessions on the server. The IndustrialSQL Server data-
base runs on another Dell server (adjacent to the InTouch server)
and maintains all archival data on production. Consequently, there
is a complete genealogy file and production history for every OSB
that leaves the plant.
The IndustrialSQL Server database’s real-time and historical
data storage provided a fast payback because the J.M. Huber staff
could now review details and data trends on every step in the OSB
production process. By streamlining the entire production line—
saving mere milliseconds of production process time—the staff was
able to eliminate up to nine seconds from each production run.
Because Huber Engineered Wood was now saving hundreds of dol-
lars per minute, the IndustrialSQL Server software paid for itself
very quickly.
Improving Efficiency
THE NEXT CHALLENGE WONDERWARE SOFTWARE MET WAS
IMPROVING THE EFFICIENCY OF J.M. HUBER’S FORMING
LINE AND PRESS EQUIPMENT, A VERY COMPLEX MECHANISM
THAT WAS DESIGNED AND BUILT IN GERMANY. The equipment
contains thousands of limit switches and, as in any continuous
process line, the timing is critical between one step and the next.
The forming line and press move so fast and go through so many
interlocks and timing events that the J.M. Huber staff could not
determine whether their line was truly optimized. Empirical tweak-
ing didn’t work because if operators changed one element in the
line, they would inevitably, yet unintentionally, change others. Each
task is measured in milliseconds, and there are hundreds of timers
in the PLC. Consequently, it was difficult to assess where they could
save time between steps.
But those days are over. Capturing data in the IndustrialSQL
h o t l i n k s • SPRING 20 0324
C A S E S T U D Y
ACP THIN-CLIENT STATIONS LOADED
WITH TERMINAL SERVICES FOR INTOUCH
SOFTWARE (BELOW) SAVED HUBER
NEARLY $1,000 PER USER, WHILE THE
INTOUCH HMI ALLOWS OPERATORS TO
VISUALIZE AND CONTROL OPERATIONS
THEY CANNOT PHYSICALLY SEE.
WONDERWARE
SOFTWARE HAS
ENABLED HUBER
ENGINEERED WOODS
TO INCREASE LINE
SPEEDS BY 8 TO 10PERCENT AND KEEP UP
WITH THE GROWING
DEMAND FOR ITS
PRODUCTS.
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