MillTools goes live at Long Falls Paperboard in Vermont
Brattleboro, VT – Long Falls Paperboard started their production day on MillTools at their specialty paper mill in Brattleboro, Vermont on May 1, 2019. The new manufacturing execution system (MES) replaces a system designed by Oracle. Panther’s MES handles production scheduling and tracking of paperboard production on the paper machine and a litany of winding, rewinding, coating, laminating, embossing, sheeting, warehousing and shipping operations at the former Neenah Paper mill. Members of Panther Systems’ Go Live Team were on-hand to assist Long Falls Paperboard’s core team and users across the paper mill’s facilities with transition and watch the first loads leave from the shipping dock in trucks.
Orders and scheduling
Panther’s advanced interface allows the Long Falls Paperboard to originate customer orders in the company’s enterprise resource planning (ERP) software. PantherAPI passes, customer data, order data and shipping instructions to Panther MillTools. The Panther MES turns customer orders into scheduled production. The PantherAPI interface returns relevant data for production and finished goods shipped by to the ERP.
Panther returns an abundance of data in the form of core tags, shipping unit labels, manifests, certificates and analysis, dashboards, electronics reports and data exports via Panther’s InfoAccess plugin for Microsoft Excel.
Roll production, converting and sheeting operations
Panther tracks quality and production on more than more than a dozen machine assets at the mill, ranging from the paper machine, winder and rewinder two coaters, a laminator, an embosser, several glazers and sheeters. Go Live Team members provided around-the-clock onsite support on the shop floor to supervise the transition from Oracle to Panther.
Operators and use simple tools inside MillTools to record quality data against reels, produced items and finished goods. Other users scale, wrap and identify shipping units with Long Falls Paperboard labels, now printed out of MillTools.
Welcome changes
The addition of MillTools helps the team at Long Falls to spend less time inputting production-related data. MillTools generates TAPPI codes to identify reels, rolls and sheet stacks. Labels from Panther identify shipping units. MillTools provides powerful tools to plan loads and ship products to customers, creating a certificate of analysis and manifest. Powerful reporting tools allow managers and supervisors to monitor and analyze productivity to make good business and operational decisions.
About Panther Systems
Established in 1993, Panther Systems is heralded by pulp and paper experts as the leading provider of manufacturing intelligence solutions. Based in Vancouver, Washington, Panther Systems is known for MillTools, a suite of powerful purpose-specific software tools, used throughout the pulp and paper industry to manage production and products from the office to mill floor to loading dock. The company’s other offerings include historian quality control solutions like TestCentral and ProcessAnalyzer and PantherQCS. Visit panthersys.com for information or call 360-750-9783.
