Cascades: Empowering manufacturing with GE Digital Plant Apps

Cascades is the fourth largest tissue paper producer in North America. To scale and standardize operations across its twenty plants, it needed to find a suitable partner. Cascades partnered with Premier Tech Digital to reach their goals and reap the reward of digitalizing their practices. For 15 years, Cascades and PT Digital have formed a smart manufacturing partnership working with GE Digital's Proficy Plant Applications software.

Project Parameters:

• Standardize operations across plants by acquiring GE Digital's Proficy Plant Applications software
• Setup a dedicated team for each phase of deployment to provide stability and support
• Dedicated, stable integration team that is providing expertise and support
• Setup Proficy to prevent downtimes and other production line issue
• Proficy allows for maximum equipment capacity and improved profitability
• Proficy to empower Quality Assurance as critical for highly competitive markets
• Genuine long-term support and guidance provided by Premier Tech Digital

Challenges:

One of the key goals of the project was to prevent breakdowns, downtime, and other issues that can affect production lines. Cascades also needed to standardize and centralize its manufacturing and manufacturing-related information.

Our approach focuses on empowering customers by sharing knowledge. By appointing a dedicated team for each phase of deployment, we provide the stability and support that's needed to succesfully launch a digital eocsystem.

"Instead of giving us fish, they teach us how to fish", said Benoit Lapensée, MES Corporate Director at Cascades CS+.

Results and advantages:

Acquiring GE Digital's Proficy Plant Applications software and working with PT Digital, provided Cascades with a digital solution that interconnects their various tools and points-of-interest, in real time. Our knowledge transfer enabled Cascades to be autonomous, to improve manufacturing, and quality management. Effectively, our paired expertise ensures manufacturing specifications that are consistent and always meet the same standards.

Our approach aims to share with and empower customers with industry-leading knowledge. We offer a sustainable way of improving performance, providing the company with the ability to unlock the skills and expertise it needs to continue to grow and improve. Dedicated teams for each phase of deployment provides stability and support to focus on working with customers to find solutions.

Carrying out the implementation in stages and continuing to improve the system is important because it allows Cascades to test and refine the system before final deployment. This ensures the system is tailored to the company's needs while quickly responding to any issues that arise.

Advantageously, our tailored approach allows equipment to improving profitability by operating at higher capacity, as well as preventing downtime and other production line issues. Put simply, our approach enables a greater real-time control of your assets and higher turnover rates.

Conclusion:

Overall, our smart manufacturing guidance provided Cascades with a plethora of important advantages:  improved processes and quality management; a unique platform for connecting different systems; support and guidance from dedicated teams; and the ability to prevent downtime and maintain quality in competitive markets. 

An evolutive implementation of smart manufacturing solutions can enable you to get a quicker and clearer overall asset management. It allows you to quantify and visualize production, refine, and optimise standards of practice, and reap higher rewards while supporting a high-quality interconnected work culture.

While there are several additional benefits, digital solution can efficiently support your teams to do what they do best and bring up to speed ambitious newcomers to their full potential.