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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