real!). After the

conversion, the space

available will be more

than double our current

office in Uruguay.

Greycon Latin America

has outgrown its office in

Montevideo and we have

now purchased a new

building. The new office

is in the same

neighbourhood, close to

the state University. The

previous owners were a

church group and had

stayed there for many

years. So, it’s going to

take a considerable

investment and about 4

months to make it

suitable for our needs.

The picture above shows

a computer-rendered

image of what it will look

like eventually (colour

scheme still under

discussion, but the tree is

Investment—New Office in Montevideo

Greycon Suite 7.3 Released

Greycon released on 26th

September the 7.3

version of the Greycon

Suite.

This is a major release,

containing significant

enhancements in all

products, but most

importantly in opt-

Studio, which now is

capable of multi-stage

production scheduling.

This includes scheduling

rules, parallel

workcentres, etc. This

considerably narrows

down the functional gap

with S-Plan.

In X-Trim there is new

functionality particularly

relevant to the plastic

film industry (see page

9), a new algorithm and

many usability

improvements (details

on page 2).

The 7.3 release is already

in production use at

Bemis in Finland.

In addition to the 7.3

release, GreyconMill has

GREYCON

October 2011

GreyLetter

Inside this issue:

X-Trim 7.3

Improvements

2

Are all “logarithms” the

same?

3

Elocoat project 4

Quality Analysis 5

GreyconMill

Enhancements

6-7

opt-Studio Multi-stage

Scheduling

8

Patent Dispute 8

opt-Studio Production

Network

9

S-Plan Enhancements 10

Hardware Musings 10

Effort in 7.3 11

Quality Assurance 11

Heartbeat Monitor 11

Not Everything Works as

Planned

12

What’s Coming Next 12

also had a new version.

Details of the changes,

which include a new

transportation screen

and control of incoming

material can be found

on pages 8 & 9.

Additional

implementation

resilience and

robustness are provided

by the enhanced

Heartbeat Monitor (see

page 11) and the ability

to deploy in a cluster

(see page 10).

Stock Pre-allocation

A button has been added

to refresh the screen, so

that the user can change

rewinder parameters and

refresh the candidate

stock list without having

to re-import stock (an

iPod Touch goes to

International Paper’s Bob

Neanover for suggesting

this).

Sample Runs

Reflecting the amount of

work that has gone into

this release, the sample

runs now number 358

(from 320).

Graphical Display of

Host Parent Reels

The graphical solution

display now also shows

the pattern for each host

parent reel.

Performance

Users will notice a

substantial improvement

in grid speeds, where we

have seen time go down

from 14 sec to 3.7 sec on

very large grids.

Users who tend to have

long sessions will also

notice huge

improvements in terms

of memory leaks, which

have been reduced by

over 80%.

Secondary

Optimisation

Secondary optimisation

has been enhanced

considerably:

Full knife change

minimisation need not

now be the only

pattern sorting rule.

For example, you can

sort by urgency and

then, within that, by

full knife changes.

Pattern sort on user-

defined properties

More options on open

stacks / order spread

X-Trim Improvements in 7.3 The 7.3 release contains

the following

enhancements (in

addition to those relating

to extrusion film,

described in page 9):

Landau Algorithm

A new algorithm for

sheeting scenarios with

very tight space

constraints between the

primary production and

sheeting.

User Settings Export /

Import

Previously restricted to

the Administrator, now a

regular X-Trim user can

export / import user

settings, such as colour,

column width, screen

size, etc.

Display of Logical /

Physical Patterns

The graphical solution

display can now be

toggled between physical

& logical patterns.

Page 2 GreyLetter

Algorithm Naming

We have been caught in

the past by the politically

incorrect practice of

naming new algorithms

after customers. For

example the KC algorithm

(for minimising patterns)

was initially implemented

at Kimberly Clark.

Adapting to industry

practice, naming new

algorithms is offered to

the pilot customer. So, the

name “Landau” comes

from a city where the

trials of the new algorithm

first took place.

Dotted lines within

each host parent reel

show the pattern at

the cutter

Toggle logical /

physical pattern

display

October 2011 Page 3

The Paper Calculator’s

reel stock optimisation

solution can now be

exported to the

Windows Clipboard.

Are all “logarithms” the same? When pitching for a

significant project, one of

the prospect’s purchasing

agents told us that “all

logarithms are the same”.

The intention presumably

being to push for a lower

price.

Leaving aside the

common error of

confusing “algorithms”

with “logarithms”, the

question arises whether

this is true.

One of our North

American customers

provides a nice proof that

this is not the case.

The mill had been using

X-Trim for a long while,

but was forced to abandon

it after the mill was spun

off from a bigger group.

The new owners

implemented an

“integrated” solution.

A few years later, they

started feeling that their

waste had increased. So,

with a trial installation of

X-Trim, they ran in

parallel for over a month.

The results showed an

advantage to X-Trim of

over $2 M pa. Sounds

impossible? Look at the

two real solutions above,

which contain only 4

orders: they have the

same run length. But if

you look closely, you will

see that X-Trim squeezes

one additional 50" roll in

the same run length.

It’s this relentless, day-in,

day-out, striving for

perfection that yields

competitive advantage.

Greycon was one of the

vendors invited to

present its GreyconMill

industry-specific MES to

the Paper Industry

Forum at the beginning

of March.

It’s a strange market,

some of the established

vendors have

abandoned any

pretence of

collaboration with SAP,

others are preaching it

with the fervour of the

newly converted.

SAICA—New Project Greycon is proud to

announce a new project

with SAICA, the premier

Spanish-owned paper

company from Zaragoza.

SAICA have been using X-

Trim for over 10 years

now. To cope with the

expansion of the

company, which includes

a green-field-site in

Partington in the UK at

over 400,000 tpa, the

company is investing in a

new ERP from our

partners, SAP. SAICA also

decided to take advantage

of the paper-machine

cycle optimisation

functionality and superior

usability available in opt-

Studio.

The new project is already

under way and has a go-

live date of Q4 2012.

Page 4 GreyLetter

GreyconMill at Elocoat

their movements into the

warehouse or to the

customer. All the

tracking functions will be

performed in

GreyconMill (with real-

time integration to the

process equipment via

OPC for automatic data

collection) and the

system will provide a

detailed traceability of

any item produced at the

plant (including all the

layers making up the

final material), this being

one key requirement for

this business providing

containers for drinks

products.

One of the unique (so far

in Greycon’s experience)

aspects is the fact that

aluminium reels are only

available at narrower

widths than the

corresponding board,

necessitating a “seam”.

Extensions to X-Trim

and to GreyconMill (see

picture below) support

this requirement.

The project also includes

elements of

GreyconMill’s logistics

functionality, for both

incoming (quality

acceptance) and

outgoing materials (all

stages of despatching).

At the time of writing,

the project has

successfully gone

through the key

milestone of user

acceptance testing with

all the functions

summarised above, and

the go-live preparation is

proceeding to schedule.

Elocoat BV is a an

extrusion coating plant

that provides the raw

material, which is coated

paperboard, for the

liquid packaging

containers of Elopak. The

packages produced by

Elopak are sold in over

100 countries by 40 sales

offices around the world.

The Elopak Group

annually produces

approximately 11 billion

(!) packages of various

sizes and formats and

employs around 2,500

people.

The emphasis of the

project is on the

synchronisation of the

raw materials availability

with the production

planning, taking into

account lead time and

trim considerations, the

optimisation of the

production cycles, the

detailed tracking of raw

materials consumption,

and the detailed tracking

of the coated reels and

New Projects

Since the last newsletter:

Elocoat is a subsidiary

of the liquid packaging

company Elopak, for

their plant in Holland.

See more information

on the right.

IBEMA is a Brazilian

producer of folding

boxboard paper in the

city of Turvo, central

region of the state of

Paraná. The project

expands the previous X-

Trim installation,

complementing it with

opt-Studio &

GreyconMill.

Vina Kraft Paper Co.

Ltd. is a joint venture of

SKIC, in Vietnam

(bringing the total to 42

countries with Greycon

installations)

Bemis Valkeakoski

(Finland) is the 11th site

of Bemis/MACTAC

group to implement X-

Trim after 9 sites in the

US and 1 site in

Belgium. The site is

now successfully live

with version 7.3 of X-

Trim for 3 production

lines (with a fourth

being setup) and

releasing trim solutions

to the MES.

Also:

Sigdopack extended the

installation for the

plants in Argentina and

Chile.

Gaston, David & Johan at

Elocoat’s “war room”

A paper board reel and two narrower

aluminium reels loaded on the

coater backstand

October 2011 Page 5

If you happen to be in

North America on 27th

October, we would be

honoured to see you at

the Greycon Talks event

in Boston. More than 30

attendees have already

signed up. For

information please

contact Mark Troncale.

Greycon Talks—Boston 27th October

Quality Analysis—Another Graph

How can we measure

quality? One way is to

look at the reported

defects. The picture on

the right shows the last 3

years of defects, in light

blue those discovered

internally and in red

those reported by the

customer.

What does this graph

tells us about the recent

past? Well, first of all

customer-discovered

defect count seems to be

heading in the right

direction.

Secondly, we seem to

have broken the

correlation between

internal & customer-

discovered defects. This

can perhaps be

attributed to the

increase in automated

testing.

Drilling down a bit

further, not all defects

are equal. When we

weight them

synthetically by severity

(5 for critical, 3 for high,

2 for normal and 1 for

low), we get the second

graph on the right. This

appears to paint the

same picture.

Finally, we can ask how

does this relate to the

installed user base? For

sure, both the complexity

of the systems has grown

over the last 3 years

(particularly as you

factor the GreyconMill

implementations) and

also the number of

customers. How can we

tell whether the

customers perceive this

improvement?

One way to answer this is

via an annual survey and,

we do this, of course.

However, annual surveys

have well-known

limitations, so here’s

another way to look at it.

The two first graphs

show, in very broad

terms, that the number

of defects is constant

(despite the increase in

complexity and user

base). The third graph

shows the percentage of

defects discovered by the

customers. This shows a

very clear downwards

trend. Hopefully this is

not a random accident,

but evidence that the

investments in QA are

beginning to pay off.

The increase from Feb 2009 is due

to the introduction of GreyconMill

Page 6 GreyLetter

A recent improvement is

the registration of

material consumptions,

where significant

enhancements have

been done as part of the

Elocoat implementation

(see page 4 for details).

GreyconMill Material Consumption

It is now possible to

record consumption for

specific items (for

instance aluminium

reels, or a given box of

polymer), which can

include traceability

information. This way we

know exactly which

items were involved in a

finished item, depending

on its geometrical

position. This is achieved

by recording accurate

information about the

position of the raw

material item.

SmurfitStone &

RockTenn

Some of you may

remember that

SmurfitStone planned

to upgrade to D-Opt

from Paper Mill

Manager (PMM).

This finally took

place in Q1 of 2011.

This is one of the

paper industry’s

largest single-

instance planning

systems, controlling

25 paper machines

across 13 mills.

Greycon had to work

quite hard to ensure

that the system’s

performance was

acceptable.

Following the

acquisition of

SmurfitStone by

RockTenn (which

was already using X-

Trim), we are

discussing the

possibility of

expanding the system

even further to

include some of

RockTenn’s mills.

The materials can be

stored in a First-In-First-

Out structure such as a

silo, in which case the

user just needs to enter

the quantity consumed

and GreyconMill can

correctly associate the

consumption to the

specific batches that were

loaded into the silo.

GreyconMill New Transportation Screen

October 2011 Page 7

Automatic Item Loading

When a supplier is

delivering items, e.g. base

paper reels, if they can

also supply, in XML

format, an electronic

document describing the

delivery, then this can be

imported automatically

into the system.

Being fully configurable,

different files from

different suppliers can

have different formats.

GreyconMill Transportation Screen

The first step of a

planned three-step

improvement process

for the logistics parts of

GreyconMill has now

been delivered.

The new layout uses a

tabbed interface, with

information arranged in

a logical and consistent

manner.

Gossip

Although we have not won the big

prize in the Euromillions lottery,

the syndicate at the London office

is slightly ahead in its “investment”.

Meanwhile here’s a photo from the

fancy dress party at the new office

in Montevideo before the builders

move in.

opt-Studio Multi-stage Scheduling

Page 8 GreyLetter

The changes associated

with this enhancement

are legion and include:

Parallel workcentres:

instead of routing tasks

to specific (physical)

machines, they can be

routed to parallel

workcentres, which

have logic in

determining how to

distribute the tasks.

The parallel’s members

do not have to be

identical and in fact

may have different

physical constraints,

The 7.3 release of opt-

Studio contains

functionality that allows

multi-stage scheduling,

i.e. workcentres

downstream of the

primary process.

This typically includes

processes such as

rewinding and sheeting,

but the model is not

limited to two stages.

In this respect the

functionality is

completely analogous to

the scheduling provided

by S-Plan.

that are taken into

account.

Gantt chart

improvements, including

the ability to hide/

highlight items and a

queue plot showing the

volume of pending work

in each workcentre.

Tools: a task may need a

set of tools in order to

execute. Each tool has a

finite number of

instances and the system

will not schedule a task

when a required tool is

not available.

Usability &

Optimisation

These two are the key

ingredients in the

development strategy for

opt-Studio.

To highlight just two

usability enhancements,

opt-Studio now supports

the 3D mouse. Hard to

describe on paper, once

you have used it, you get

addicted. The other one is

the synchronisation of

the grid display with the

Gantt, e.g., you can filter

for a grade or a customer.

On the optimisation side,

we are now beginning to

take into account trim

considerations during the

creation of blocks & runs.

Although there is more

left to do in this area,

already we are providing

a competitive edge to our

customers.

Patent Dispute

This lawsuit (the first

ever in the 25+ year

history of Greycon) has

now been settled. In the

process we have learnt

more about the US

intellectual property

system than we would

have liked.

Unfortunately, the

settlement terms and our

opinion of the whole

saga have to remain

confidential.

We announced back in

December 2010 that

Greycon, together with

four of our competitors

(!?!) and some of our

clients, were being sued

for infringing US patent

6,745,099. A troll

October 2011 Page 9

opt-Studio Production Network At the Lumirror project

(Toray Plastics America)

in Rhode Island, the users

wanted to have an

equivalent to S-Plan’s

Order Network. This can

be immensely useful in

tracking down production

updates from the MES in

the presence of trim

sheets (with their many-to

-many logical to physical

entities relationship).

Accordingly, we have now

built an updated and

enhanced version, sharing

the same component as

GreyconMill.

New White Paper

As the film-specific

functionality in X-Trim

grows, a new white paper,

X-Trim for the Film

Industry, is available to

registered users from our

web site

The icons indicate

completion status and

whether any over-

make has taken place

New X-Trim Features for Film Slitting

interesting challenge

here was to re-interpret

the order

position

constraints, for

example,

middle,

becomes not left

for the jumbo

reel on the left.

A separate

enhancement employs a

user-defined numeric

attribute to characterise

orders for low quality

specifications. In a soft

manner, such orders are

then preferentially

placed on the

edge and patterns

consisting

entirely of such

orders are sorted

to the beginning

of the run, where

the quality is less

certain.

Finally, new logic allows

the core type on selected

winders to alternate

between stations.

In conjunction with the

Lumirror project at Toray

Plastics America in

Providence RI, we have

been building some

enhancements in X-Trim.

X-Trim can now handle

middle knife, also known

as direct handover, where

the primary extrusion

process has a semi-

moveable knife in the

middle producing two

jumbo reels side-by-side

that are then taken to

separate slitters. The

Bars show

progress

The new queue plot

New Office in China

Page 10 GreyLetter

Company, has been set

up in Shouguang,

Shandong Province in

China. The new company

can now invoice

customers in China.

The operation is headed

by Jack Zhang.

After some considerable

effort with various

bureaucratic processes, a

fully-authorised, wholly-

owned subsidiary of

Greycon, Shandong

Greycon Software

Technology Limited

Jack and a new employee ,

John Wang recently

travelled all the way (30+

hours!) to Montevideo for

training on GreyconMill

and opt-Studio.

S-Plan in 7.3—New Grids

may well make more

sense nowadays to

combine on a single

multi-CPU / multi-core

server both the database

and the application

servers. This way,

database traffic does not

go over Ethernet but

follows potentially much

faster internal routes.

So what is the optimal

hardware platform for a

Greycon

implementation? The

answer of course is that

it depends!

But in a shift from

conventional thinking,

where there is a

dedicated database

server with one or more

application servers, it

Pushing in the opposite

direction is the availability

of solid-state memory and

a Greycon application

server definitely benefits

from the faster loading of

our rather large

executables. Please ask for

specific advice!

New videos on how to

cluster are also available.

Paper Mill Manager RIP

The migration of

SmurfitStone to D-Opt

has left only Temple

Inland using PMM and

now the company has

been acquired by IP.

We expect therefore to

retire PMM in the

future, as the

integration proceeds.

Hardware Musings

appropriate, the grid can

be filtered by right-click.

Not all of the S-Plan

grids could be upgraded

in the time available. We

would hope to address

Although with multi-

stage scheduling opt-

Studio is becoming more

of a functional

replacement for S-Plan,

Greycon have invested

about 550 hours to

replace most of the grids

in S-Plan with a more

powerful and good-

looking grid; the same

one as used in X-Trim.

The new grid has more

attractive layout, with

better use of spacing.

Alternate row shading

improves readability.

Columns can be

coloured. Where

the quota management

section in Campaign

Manager, the SQL log file

and the Order Status

screen for the next release.

Clustering

With the

generous

assistance of our partner

Intel, we conducted

some interesting

benchmarks on HP

servers, including

clustering. This provides

a great deal of resilience.

October 2011 Page 11

Heartbeat Monitor

Effort in 7.3

7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3

Released Feb 2010 Jul 2010 Feb 2011 Sep 2011

No enhancements Aug 2010 Jan 2011 Aug 2011 Apr 2012

No changes Feb 2011 Jul 2011 Feb 2012 Sep 2012

No support Aug 2012 Jan 2013 Aug 2013 Apr 2013

The 7.3 release scales

new pinnacles in terms of

automated testing. For

just the GUI tests, where

the previous release took

roughly 280 minutes to

cycle through automated

tests, the new release

takes about 480 minutes

(a full 8 hours on a

reasonable fast machine).

To ensure that this is not

simply a reflection of

performance

slowdown, a separate

stress test monitors the

performance of each

application to ensure

optimal performance.

The graph on the right

shows the evolution of

some of the automated

test suites.

Quality Assurance

In the 7.2 release we

introduced a new

Greycon component,

called the Heartbeat

Monitor.

This runs as a separate

service, ideally on a

separate (low-spec)

server or an old PC.

The Heartbeat Monitor

can send notifications by

email and also SMS. It

also checks itself to

ensure that its own

memory usage is not

increasing.

The latest version

included in 7.3 allows the

user to check her own

SQL views, both in terms

of contents and in terms

of performance.

The application has been

extremely beneficial

already at Clairefontaine

and we are rolling it out

at other installations.

Security

Greycon has recently

ramped up its

investment in security;

this involves closing

down most ports into

our network, additional

security precautions in

terms of hardening our

internal & external

systems and tighter

control of laptops. A

new recruit, Alex

Muller, now heads our

internal IT team.

Already a separate

“performance” test suite

is in place.

Redesign of the solution

progress screen.

S-Plan

Continue the work to

replace the grids.

These are some of the

things we are working

on for the 7.4 release,

due December 2011.

X-Trim

Emphasis on improving

performance on difficult

-to-solve instances.

opt-Studio

Task splitting, this will

give the ability to, for

example, move part of a

pattern to a different

winder.

What’s Coming Next?

ABTCP Brazil

In May Greycon hosted an invitation

-only day at ABTCP, the Brazilian

Technical Association for Pulp &

Paper.

As some of us did not, unfortunately,

speak Portuguese, the event was

simultaneously interpreted, an

initially very confusing but actually

very smooth experience.

Representatives from the recent

project at ArjoWiggins Security

Papers in Brazil talked about their

experience.

7 Calico House,

Plantation Wharf,

London SW11 3TN.

Phone: +44 20 7978 0700

E-mail: cng@greycon.com

Established for over 25 years, Greycon systems are

now installed in over 400 plants world-wide,

spanning all continents.

Win an Apple iPod Touch

32GB 4th Generation. Open

to users sending us suggested

improvements, which are

adopted (the key for an

enhancement to be adopted is

for it to have a high value /

development effort ratio). For

this round, please send your

entries to Jari by December 15th.

There are a number of activities where the textbook approach has not worked

for Greycon:

Search engine optimisation . There are many articles, whole companies

even, dedicated to ensuring that a web site comes close to the top in the

various search engines. We have tried several of them and can confirm

that they have a negligible impact on the traffic our site gets.

President’s Hotline: we have had this facility available for more than a year

and the number of emails we have received, filtering out the spam (which

was surprisingly small in volume), is …. exactly zero.

X-Trim Feedback: this facility, introduced in 7.0 (April 2010), prompts the

user to send “interesting” runs to Greycon. We have received only a

handful of such runs.

We can only speculate why these mechanisms have not worked. Particularly

the third one seems a pity—without such runs our work is that much more

likely to miss good targets. But of course a niche company such as Greycon is

quite different from a consumer-oriented web business. If you have any bright

ideas, do please let us know.

Not Everything Works as Planned