With the requirement of ongoing production during installation, Kimberly-Clark’s Project Management planned the project very carefully. FlexLink was asked to carry out the installation and commissioning during three separate phases in order to adjust to deliveries of other equipment,. Due to the flexibility of the FlexLink equipment, production level was maintained during the entire installation. Today the production lines are running 24 hours, seven days a week. After the main project was completed some fine-tunings, additions and further line extensions have been made in order to meet new production needs.

FlexLink’s Project Manager, Hans Östergren, “We made our time schedule in close co-operation. The key thing was to utilize enough resources early in the project, enabling us to run several parallel activities, both for engineering and installation.” To secure the functionality of the more advanced DFC equipment, acceptance tests were carried out in FlexLink’s workshop according to schedule. At the same time, the site installation of the conveyor infrastructure was running at full speed and preparations for the pre-tested equipment were made. 

Björn Gustafsson, one of FlexLink’s responsible technicians at site: “We had a good flow during the installation, with only a few delivery problems. The first-class installation drawings from our engineers were useful, and we kept the time-schedule as promised. I would also like to mention the excellent co-operation with Kimberly-Clark’s project team as a success factor.” 

“Successful projects reflect the attitude of the people involved” 
All people with project experience know that attaining the right attitude requires upgrading and changes in a project of this size, says Tony Lloyd, Kimberly-Clark’s Project Manager. I think that FlexLink has shown the right attitude. Problems need to be solved together, and actions taken quickly. Moreover, it is easy to forget that everything went more smoothly than we expected, for instance the commissioning and start up, which was done ahead of schedule.” 

The wide range of FlexLink standard assortment 
The conveyor equipment was based on the wide range of FlexLink standard assortment, engineered to cope with the environment in a tissue converting industry. Valuable floor space was made available by running some of the conveyors above head height, also enabling good access to the machines. 

In-line elevation of the products was done by incline/wedge elevators and then chutes bring down products to the in-feed height of the packaging equipment. 

In this project FlexLink uses the patented Dynamic Flow Concept for diverting and merging single rolls and packs of rolls in order to meet Kimberly-Clark’s requirements for flexible production, keeping the packaging machinery as busy as possible. 

The diverters have the possibility to cope with today’s high production rates and be very space efficient at the same time. The machinery has small dimensions itself, and it minimizes lengths of conveyors with no needs of product backlog. 

Control of the products on an individual basis 
FlexLink’s DFC diverters keep control of the products on an individual basis. This enables it to be put ‘anywhere’ in between production- and packaging-machinery, both for single products and packs of products. This makes it possible to keep the amount of non-value adding conveyors as low as possible. 

Telescopic conveyors and pivoting belt-conveyors, enabling products to reach different lanes into machines, were also used to get the flexibility. Reject units taking care of faulty products and gating conveyors are examples of other equipment used to secure quality and access to the machinery. 

Björn Hamsten finds something to add: “The tissue converting industry has had, and in some cases still have, quality problems on products and packs due to the distribution system. Minimizing product damages has always been an important task for me and I am pretty sure that it has been solved in this production facility.” 

FlexLink’s standard operator interface is in use for the control system 
It is possible to control and manage the whole system from different cabinets and FlexLink’s standard operator interface is in use. On the password protected touch screens you can follow and set the production requirements. It is easy to search the system and get actual status on the equipment, e.g. on individual motors showing energy consumption, speed, etc. 

The conveyors are only running when needed and speeds are kept to a minimum in order to reduce power consumption, among other things. The pull of products from the machines down stream sets the requirements and the distribution system builds the needed intermediate bridges. The control system for the equipment communicates with the system in which the production is set, measured and followed up. 

Two-wire communication and an ingenious layout of the power distribution were made for basically two important reasons. Hans Östergren, explains: “First of all it reduces installation time and the amount of cables necessary. Secondly with future expansion in mind, its flexibility and ease of change and additions meets the requirements of the tissue industy very well. It is all to easy to look on an investment with a shortterm mind in order to keep down project costs.”

Hans Östergren: ”I am very proud of the system we delivered to Kimberly-Clark. It is an impressive operation they have there. It was an honour to be involved in the project and I have learnt a lot.”